Abstract
BackgroundThis article discusses the link between disability and malaria in a poor rural setting. Global malaria programmes and rehabilitation programmes are organized as vertical and separate programmes, and as such they focus on prevention, cure and control, and disability respectively. When looking at specific conditions and illnesses, the impairing long-term consequences of illness incidents during childhood are not questioned.MethodsThe study design was ethnographic with an open, exploratory approach. Data were collected in Mangochi District in Malawi through qualitative in-depth interviews and participant observation.ResultsDespite a local-based health service system, people living in poor rural areas are confronted with a multitude of barriers when accessing malaria prevention and treatment. Lack of skilled health personnel and equipment add to the general burden of poverty: insufficient knowledge about health care, problems connected to accessing the health facility in time, insufficient initiatives to prevent malaria attacks, and a general lack of attention to the long term disabling effects of a malaria attack.ConclusionsThis study points to the importance of building malaria programmes, research and statistics that take into consideration the consequences of permanent impairment after a malaria attack, as well as the context of poverty in which they often occur. In order to do so, one needs to develop methods for detecting people whose disabilities are a direct result of not having received health services after a malaria episode. This may be done through qualitative approaches in local communities and should also be supplemented by suitable surveys in order to estimate the problem on a larger scale.
Highlights
This article discusses the link between disability and malaria in a poor rural setting
The importance of studying the relationship between malaria and disability emerged through findings from a comprehensive qualitative study on access to health care for people with disabilities in southern Africa
While malaria in principle may strike everyone in affected areas, children who are poor, who have mothers with little or no education, and who live in the rural areas are more susceptible to contracting the disease
Summary
This article discusses the link between disability and malaria in a poor rural setting. Global malaria programmes and rehabilitation programmes are organized as vertical and separate programmes, and as such they focus on prevention, cure and control, and disability respectively. Malaria for a long time has had its special vertical programmes in the WHO and the Ministries of Health of affected countries, [4] the “war against malaria” has not yet been won [5]. Disability due to cerebral malaria and the need for postmalaria neurological screening, especially in children under the age of five years, is only occasionally mentioned [8,9]. Visits to malaria stricken areas, especially rural and poor urban ones, reveal a number of people with disabilities who report that their impairment followed an episode of malaria. Epilepsy as an initial complication often leads to physical and/or intellectual impairment when untreated
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