Infection is Expensive; Prevention is Not
Infections and resultant impacts on human health pose a significant public health problem across the globe.
Of the many direct and indirect impacts of such infections, the economic burden they pose on the victimized individuals and the society at large is gigantic.
Rather too many of such diseases exist, some new and some reappearing!! As per the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), 16 new diseases have been discovered, and 5 have been identified as re-emerging in the last two decades. Some of these illnesses include dengue, anthrax, typhoid, diphtheria, yellow fever, cholera, and tuberculosis.
Earlier, with the smallpox eradication in 1979, the world seemed to have entered the ‘changed’ ecosystem—an ecosystem where antibiotics could eliminate the risk of infectious diseases. However, much to our dismay, the infection-causing microorganisms have become way more ‘immune’ to survive, adapt, and re-adapt to antibiotic ingenuity.
Diseases of poverty
Diseases of poverty are ones that primarily occur in low-income countries, hence the name, and are chiefly attributed to malnutrition and lack of adequate sanitation. Such diseases like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, malaria contribute to half of the burden of diseases in these countries.
In already a poverty-gripped situation, what must the occurrence of such diseases entail?
It leads to a ‘poverty trap,’ i.e., an unmanageable poverty condition trapping individuals, societies, and whole economies.
With a low per capita income (ranking 126 in 200 countries), India spends around 1% of its GDP on health. This is disappointing, and hence the apparent lack of proper healthcare and medical facilities can be seen in the country. Such a low figure ultimately poses a direct burden on the pockets of the general public, who struggle financially and emotionally to make their way through a disease.
Journey of a Patient
While not the entire journey of a patient, we are focusing here only from an economic point of view.
A diseased patient incurs two types of costs –
↪ Direct costs
These are the direct healthcare costs like hospital expenses, medicinal expenses, etc.
↪ Indirect costs
Indirect costs include (and must say are sometimes less measurable but more burdensome than the direct costs) the patient’s transportation, loss of income while the patient is ‘sick,’ impacts to the family, post-disease symptoms and care, long-term impacts, etc.
While a patient gets directly jolted by the direct costs, the indirect costs are also very significant and not even covered under any medical insurance (if you come to think of it that way). In addition, some not so very ‘kind’ people (mis)use such instances like an opportunist (excessive rise in the ambulance prices during Covid peak, exceptionally high priced much-required goat’s milk for dengue patients). In either case, what we want to convey is the economic load these infections can have on us.
Hence, choose wisely, as an infection is expensive, prevention is not!
Avani Raj Arora
29 thoughts on “Infection is Expensive; Prevention is Not”
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