Poor Economics Resume Chapter 3 : Health

Hei there! I am going to continue my resume for chapter 3 of Poor Economics Book. Things are getting more interesting as more pages i flipped. The way the author present the book is great. On one side, you are being taken directly to observe and feel the poor's condition as you were there. On the other side, it still relate the phenomenon with relevant economic approaches, making it easily understandable, and can be modeled for a wider use.

In chapter 3, it talks about poverty and health. Health is an important aspect for every single human in earth. We had seen million people dead each year because of disease. Most of them are comes out as a result of flawed behavior to maintain body health. This case are worse for poor. Unlike the rich, who had enough money to pay the bill, poor often can not do anything other than pray, and struggling for disease they suffer. The cost are way to expensive for them to pay it off. There just only one way out, that author emphasize a lot trough this chapter, which is implementing preventive action for reducing risk from suffering.

It is interesting to know that poor disease are less various than rich When our middle and rich people are suffer from a so-called-modern disease like stroke, cancer, diabetes, etc, poor are less varied with their disease. Most of them are suffer from malaria, diarrhea, fever, HIV, polio and disease which mainly came from dirty living place, rather than eating habit. This risk of suffering for this disease, actually, can be reduce, if they know how to prevent it. Giving them Oralit ( a mixture between salt, sugar, and water to reduce dehydration), can reduce the death rate caused of dehydration that is experience by diarrhea patients. It even can be further mitigate if the family purify the water with NaCl ( according to the book, poor had low access to piped water, thus, use unreliable source of water). For malaria, lot of NGO had provide them with bed nest. Bed nest will cover them from mosquito attack when we sleep. For polio, it is recommend that child below 7 are routinely immunized.

There are lot of ways that can be done to reduce the risk, but in fact, it is not easy to convince the poor. In many ways, even when the service was offering at very low rate, even free, much of them are reluctant to do that. It is simply because they do not have any urgency to cover them self now. Author relates it with an argument that people tend to suffer more in present, than in the future. Based on the argument, author believe that reluctance came as poor's are not suffer now, so why should care?. Whereas, the cost of prevention are far more cheaper than medication. But poor's seemed can not see the importance of prevent themselves from the threat.

Institutional problems also exist. In some countries, there are lack of proper medical facilities available. Even when its available, poor had no incentives to use it. Doctors often not reliable. In their studies, it shown that doctors in rural are asked less than it should ask, and giving under-perform treatment to patient. But it is quite reasonable, since less good doctors are willing to be placed in rural areas.

To solve this problem. Author came with a solution to design a system to encourage poor's to receive the prevention program routinely. And he chooses to gives them reward if they are came to take the prevention program. And as planned, it works! Number of people receiving programs are increasing after being promised for a reward. Yet problem are not solved already. One question left : How long it would gonna last? Will it still continue even when there are no rewards? . Those are not answered until the end of chapter. I expect that those questions will be discussed later on.  But one thing for sure, another problem is on the way, and implementing theories to poor are simply not as easy as we thought.

I am now reading chapter 4 about school. Looking for another great story!