Malaria is a severe and at times fatal disease caused by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, which spread the parasite that causes the disease, Plasmodium. Despite considerable progress in reducing malaria over the past decades, this ancient scourge continues to be a major challenge for public health particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where some 90 percent of malaria-related deaths occur and girls most vulnerable. Malaria not only affects people’s health, it also affects development. This article looks at the economic burden of malaria and shows why saving lives through prevention is crucial for sustainable development.
The Economic Burden of Malaria
1. Healthcare Costs
- Direct Costs: Malaria imposes costly burdens on health systems: the direct costs involve the costs of diagnosis, treatment, hospitalization, and management of severe disease which can be heavy and sometimes a real challenge for the health systems of low-income countries.
- Indirect costs: The indirect costs of malaria are also important. These include the costs of lost productivity from illness, premature death, and the effects of long-term morbidity from the malaria parasite on people’s participation in the labor force.
- For instance, in their report Malaria: Eliminating a major wellness scourge (2010), the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that malaria incurs economic costs of billions of dollars every year in treating the sick and lost productivity.
2. Impact on Economic Productivity
- Productivity of the Workforce: Malaria primarily affects the most productive years of individuals’ lives; absenteeism due to it undermines productivity and, when individuals are unwell, less is produced. Less production equates to lower economic growth and delayed development, particularly in those economies, most of which are in the tropics, where malaria is heavily concentrated in agriculture.
- Economic development: economic growth in those countries where malaria is particularly prevalent is often slow. Not only does the disease reduce people’s capacity to work (labor productivity), medical care costs can be very high with long-lasting consequences on the economy and poverty.
For instance, the World Bank has demonstrated that malaria can lower GDP growth by as much as 1.3 percent per year in the countries affected by it.
3. Educational Impact
- Absenteeism: School: Children have to stay at home when they feel ill, and they might get malaria, which is why we have a lot of school absenteeism as well. When children miss school for a long time [it] will affect educational attainment and opportunities for income-generating activities.
- Long-Term Effects: Losing a lot of school to malaria can mean you never achieve your educational potential, in turn reducing your earnings and the likelihood of getting a good job. This just prolongs the poverty/underdevelopment cycle.
- Example: Children with malaria miss more school, a factor that has been linked to lifelong educational and economic losses.
The Importance of Prevention
1. Cost-Effectiveness of Prevention
Preventive Measures: Malaria prevention is cost-effective compared with treating the disease. Key preventive measures include:
- Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITNs): Provide a protective barrier against mosquito bites, significantly reducing malaria transmission.
- Indoor Residual Spray (IRS) entails the spraying of insecticides on the walls of homes where mosquitoes come in contact with the treated surface and die.
- Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT): given to pregnant women and infants to prevent malaria during pregnancy and infancy.
- Economic Return: The economic return for every dollar invested in prevention measures is high as the need for expensive medical treatment decreases and workers are more productive.
- For example: The World Health Organisation estimates that every US dollar spent on the prevention of malaria generates up to US$40 in economic benefits.
2. Enhancing Healthcare Infrastructure
Strengthening Health Systems: Effective malaria prevention and control require robust healthcare infrastructure, including:
- Diagnostic and Treatment Facilities: Malaria should be treated with ready access to effective and efficient diagnostic treatment services.
- Surveillance and Monitoring: It is important to monitor trends in the spread of malaria and patterns of resistance, to optimize the use of prevention strategies.
- Economic payoffs: By tackling the research productively, economic development benefits from healthcare infrastructure that goes beyond malaria control but enhances resilience into the overall health system.
For instance, countries that have managed to dramatically lower rates of malaria – such as those like Rwanda which reduced cases from 250 per 1,000 people in 2000 to less than 1 per 1,000 in 2017 – have improved healthcare infrastructure and economic growth as a result.
3. Community Engagement and Education
- Behavior change: Community engagement and educational strategies for behavior change are critical to the success of any prevention strategy. Educating the community on proper ITN use, reporting symptoms of the disease early, and eliminating mosquito breeding sites when and where they can do so, will reduce malaria transmission.
- Community participation empowers practices and has a better chance of being sustainable to prevent malaria Coming from the rhetoric of development organisations and donor agencies, this does seem like the kind of thing one would say. Sustainable Practices: Community participation empowers practices and has a better chance of being sustainable to prevent malaria.
- For example: In places where community health education programs have been put into practice, there has been a reduction in the incidence of malaria and an increase in the number of individuals who follow prevention measures.
The Role of International Support
1. Global Health Initiatives
- International financing and support: Important global financing and support mechanisms have been essential to malaria prevention and control: International institutions and initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) provide funds and means for malaria programmes.
- Technical support: International agencies can provide technical support, such as advice on good practices in malaria control and technical support in implementing programs.
- For example, the Global Fund has spent billions of dollars funding malaria control, reducing these cases and deaths in many endemic countries.
2. Research and Innovation
- New tools and strategies: Consistent research and innovation are necessary to create new tools and strategies for malaria prevention and treatment, such as new insecticides, a vaccine, and other treatment methods.
- Economic impact: investing in research and innovation could lead to more effective interventions and better control of malaria in the long run.
- Example: the development of the RTS, S/AS01 malaria vaccine is an important step forward towards the prevention of malaria and could reduce disease further.
We must consider how severely malaria affects economic development by looking at the additional costs of healthcare, reduced worker productivity, and decreased investment in education. Essentially, malaria causes the economy to miss out on the benefits that these investments could bring if the disease were not a factor. Although it is very costly to treat and cure, effective prevention is a highly cost-effective intervention that provides major economic and health benefits.
Preventive measures, including the use of insecticide-treated nets, indoor residual spraying, and intermittent preventive treatment not only cut malaria transmission and thus its economic consequences but also provide a platform for long-term development and growth to thrive. The need for strengthening health systems, greater local and international integration, and deeper research continues.
This investment, which would be both a social and an economic gain, with the prevention of illness and death from malaria, will also reduce the long-term economic disadvantage experienced by malaria-endemic areas in their efforts toward economic growth and development.
