Does malaria affect population vigour?

QUESTION:

How is malaria affecting population vigour at present?

ANSWER:

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking if malaria affects the well-being of populations. In answer, malaria is an extremely debilitating disease in many populations around the world, and is known to severely affect population vigour.

People infected with malaria are likely to miss work or school, and of course are at risk of dying from the disease as well. There is, moreover, an intimate association between malaria and poverty, with malaria both being considered a disease caused by poverty as well as a cause of it – malaria is known to result in lost productivity through absenteeism, permanent neurological damage caused by severe disease episodes, and changes in economic or investment decisions based on presence of malaria.

One estimate is that a combination of the above indirect costs of malaria, together with direct costs on the healthcare infrastructure, cost Africa as much as $12 billion per year in lost economic output. A review on the link between poverty and malaria was written in 2002 by Jeffrey Sachs and Pia Malaney for the scientific journal Nature.

(full access to the content may depend on subscription).