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The link between poverty and tuberculosis (TB) is well established. TB infection is transmitted more readily in conditions such as overcrowding, inadequate ventilation and malnutrition, which are associated with poverty. TB also diminishes the livelihoods of affected individuals, by preventing gainful employment, creating costs associated with treatment-seeking or coping with illness, and by having an adverse impact on social relationships.
Analyses suggest that the poor have greater difficulty overcoming barriers in accessing care and completing treatment. They have fewer resources to use, both for direct costs (such as consultation fees and transport to health facilities) and indirect costs such as child care. Poverty may also contribute significantly to lower treatment success rates in high and lower TB burden countries alike.
- TB and poverty: are we doing enough?
- Although international targets on TB control may soon be reached, there is concern that the poor are still being missed. This report, published by EQUI-TB, argues that improved TB control does not automatically reach the poor, due to a combination of weak health systems, lack of political will, and barriers of access for poor patients.
Recommended reading
- Vulnerability to malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS infection and disease: Part 1: determinants operating at individual and household level
- ( I. Bates; C. Fenton; J. Gruber; D. Lalloo; A. Medina Lara; S.B. Squire; S. Theobald; R. Thomson; R. Tolhurst / The Lancet , 2004)
- Recommended reading
- This review assesses the various factors that affect vulnerability to malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS infection and disease at the individual and household levels. Produced by The Lancet, it examin...
- Vulnerability to malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS infection and disease: Part II: determinants operating at environmental and institutional level
- ( I. Tolhurst Bates; C. Fenton; J. Gruber; D. Lallo; A. Medina Lara; S.B. Squire; S. Theobald; R. Thomson / The Lancet , 2004)
- Recommended reading
- This review, produced by The Lancet, looks at the various factors that influence vulnerability to malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS infection at environmental and institutional level. It identif...
- A systematic analysis of TB and poverty
- ( B. Nhelma / EQUI-TB Knowledge Programme , 2003)
- Recommended reading
- While tuberculosis (TB) is not exclusively a disease of the poor, the association between poverty and TB is well established and widespread. Globally, the highest burden of TB is found in poor countri...
Latest Additions
- A handbook for those working in the community who supporting HIV prevention, care, support and treatment
- ( International HIV/AIDS Alliance , 2009)
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Uganda like many other developing countries, suffers from inequitable distribution of health workers between rural and urban areas and between public and private sectors. To strengthen the referral...
- Integrating HIV and TB care in Benin and the DRC
- ( Josef Decosas (ed) / Health Research for Action , 2008)
- This document is the final evaluation of a three year project to pilot integrated HIV and TB care in Benin and the DRC. The project was implemented by the National Tuberculosis Programmes of the two c...
