WEF Africa 2017: How to combat diseases of poverty
Health policies regarding diseases found in poverty-stricken areas needed to be addressed at a broader level and developed to incorporate socio-economic factors.
This was among the key sentiments which emerged at a session entitled “Combatting Diseases of Poverty” at the World Economic Forum on Africa meeting in Durban on Wednesday.
Kenya’s Minister of Health Cheopa Mailu shared his country’s policies to address health challenges among the poor which focused on mother-to-child and maternal services, as well as ensuring that all disabled people, orphans and senior citizens over 65 were insured with a national hospital insurance.
“Governments can put in place practical strategies to bridge the gap,” said Mailu.
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University of Cape Town Associate Professor in Public Health Medicine, Tolu Oni, later gave the example of hypertension, a silent disease which affects an estimated 80% of South Africans over the age of 50.
And while this disease could be avoided through healthy lifestyle choice, this was not always possible if one was poor and struggling to meet the most basic of needs Oni said.
“While TB is a major disease and malaria also a big one across Africa, increasingly so are diabetes and hypertension,” she said.
“Because hypertension is a silent disease, it is often only found at a late stage and while there are lifestyle choices such as reduced physical activity, intake of too much salt or genetic factors, sometimes it’s not a choice.”
Ellen Agler from The End Fund in the United States added: “For example, diseases caused by worms require vector and water control. We sometimes find eradicable diseases surge back.”
Naveen Rao of Merck for Mothers, said: “If a mother dies in childbirth, it is a signal of failure. Poverty and disease are two sides of a bad coin and they are inextricably linked.” Rao added that of the 20 countries with the highest mortality rates, 17 of these were the world’s poorest countries.
The panel discussion also highlighted that in many cases, patients from poverty-stricken areas would be treated but then sent back into the same living conditions which had given rise to or played a key role in their becoming ill in the first place.
“We focus on treatment, but neglect the fact we are sending them back into the conditions which caused the problem in the first place,” said Oni.
The panel agreed that public health needs to be the concern, not only of each government’s health department, but also across other governmental departments, as well as the medical and private sectors.