The Socioeconomic Impact: Assessing the Risk and Burden of Malaria on Vulnerable Populations in Kenya

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the significance and impact of malaria on Kenya’s economic growth. This will help to understand the impact that malaria has or have had on household economic status especially for the vulnerable population in Kenya and how it has been unfolding slowly over time. This will also seek to understand the coping strategies adopted by the said population and the negative implications that have influenced these household’s abilities to withstand malaria and other eventualities that may happen in the future. The risk and burden of malaria on vulnerable population together with its economic effects have been presented. Search engines such as Google Scholar and PubMed as well as related economics and medical journals were instrumental for this study. To protect the poor and vulnerable population against these adverse effects of malaria and from malaria itself, there is a great need to draft and enact policies that will be able control the effects as well as integration development and poverty reduction programs. The future work and focus for government and all stakeholders should be to focus more energy and work on achievable health services that will eliminate the burden of health especially malaria and its effects on Kenyan economic activities undertaken by the vulnerable population and to address the burden and risk of malaria on the productive under privileged within their environment, as well as study the epidemiological and socio-economic geographical dissimilarities of the vulnerable population and the normal population.