Inequalities in Major Infectious Diseases – Center for Health Decision Science

CHDS faculty Stéphane Verguet and colleagues recently published research in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization on the inequalities associated with diarrhea, pneumonia, and measles deaths for children under five years old in sub-Saharan Africa.

Little is known about the extent of inequalities across socioeconomic groups of these diseases in low- and middle-income countries, where they are among the leading causes of death for children under five. Using Demographic and Health Surveys and multidimensional optimization techniques for twenty-one countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the authors estimated the impact of risk factors (e.g., stunting, wasting), vaccination coverage, and treatment utilization on the distribution across wealth quintiles of these major infectious diseases. Findings revealed that more deaths occur from diarrhea, pneumonia, and measles among children younger than five years old in the poorest wealth quintiles compared with the richest. These new, generalizable methods developed for the study could be adapted to study health disparities for other diseases.

Learn more: Read the publication, Inequalities in Diarrhoea, Pneumonia and Measles Deaths: Estimates