malaria and HIV

I am reading this paper about vulnerability to infectious diseases and it reinforces my wonder and puzzlement at the hardiness of humankind. As a doctor, we study volumes and tomes about diseases - pathology books, microbiology books about all the worms, bugs and viruses in the world, medicine - about how all these diseases and ailments actually effect the body, surgery laying claim that the best way to treat a lot of diseases is to cut it out, but, it amazes me that so many people are relatively healthy!!

This is what makes this paper in the Lancet really interesting. It makes the claim that when we allocate scarce resources to dealing with infectious diseases namely "The Unholy Trinity" of Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS there has been an imbalance. The imbalance arises from concentrating on biologically vulnerable groups, eg. pregnant women and children between 0-5 years for malaria, adult males for TB and adolescent females, young mothers for HIV/AIDS. This unfortunately doesn't take into account other non-biological vulnerability factors such as nutrition, poverty, stigmatisation, education etc.

For example, if you think about it 1.2 billion people live in poverty. Approx 6 million people(1%) of the world's population die from these three diseases. How many of us would bet against the majority of these 6 million people being from the poor 1.2 billion?

Enough morbid thoughts! Am off to play some more cricket vs Lincoln II. My back has suddenly given way following a stupid fall from my cycle and I think I need to go back to physiotherapy!!