title: Poverty, global health, and infectious disease: lessons from Haiti and Rwanda.
abstract: Poverty and infectious diseases interact in complex ways. Casting destitution as intractable, or epidemics that afflict the poor as accidental, erroneously exonerates us from responsibility for caring for those most in need. Adequately addressing communicable diseases requires a biosocial appreciation of the structural forces that shape disease patterns. Most health interventions in resource-poor settings could garner support based on cost/benefit ratios with appropriately lengthy time horizons to capture the return on health investments and an adequate accounting of externalities; however, such a calculus masks the suffering of inaction and risks eroding the most powerful incentive to act: redressing inequality.
authors: Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Economics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA. malsan@fas.harvard.edu
authors: Marcella M
authors: MM
authors: Alsan
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Westerhaus
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Herce
authors: Koji
authors: K
authors: Nakashima
authors: Paul E
authors: PE
authors: Farmer
mesh_terms: D001723:Birth Rate; D046688:Child Mortality; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D003906:Developing Countries; D014943:Global Health; D006205:Haiti / Q000453:epidemiology; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D011203:Poverty; D012432:Rwanda / Q000453:epidemiology