Economic cost of malaria in Rwanda

Although malaria is widely recognized as a major public health problem in much of Africa, its impact on a specific national or regional economy has proved difficult to assess. This paper demonstrates the kind of analysis possible given available national aggregate statistics on epidemiology and economic indicators, the type of data most readily available. An economic model which applies the average cost of malaria per case to the known number of cases in Rwanda for 1989 estimated the total cost to be $ 2.88 per capita (in 1987 US dollars). Of this cost, $0.63 per capita represents the direct cost of treatment, including care of outpatients and hospitalized cases in both government and private facilities, as well as self-treatment. The other $ 2.25 per capita represents the indirect costs of productive time lost to malaria morbidity in adults and to care for sick children, and the cost of lifetime earnings lost through premature malaria mortality. The average output per day of the Rwandan economy was $0.83 in 1989. Thus, the per capita malaria cost equals 3.5 days of production or 1% of GDP. The average cost of each of the 1,722,271 reported malaria cases in 1989 was $11.82: $2.58 in direct and $9.24 in indirect cost. The direct cost per case is equal to 160% of the per capita budget of the Ministry of Health. Economic and epidemiological projections to 1995 yield an increase in malaria cases to over 4 million at a cost of $7.11 per capita. Direct costs are projected to rise over 200% due to increasing costs of drugs and supplies to treat increasingly drug-resistant cases. Indirect costs, which are tied to a declining economy, are projected to rise by just over 100%. By 1995, malaria is projected to cost 2.4% of the Rwandan GDP, exacerbating an already serious impact.