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Poverty and low income have been shown to cause ill health,
and poor countries tend to have worse outcomes than high-income countries
(Wagstaff, 2002). An individual’s inability to achieve a certain minimal standard
of living is, in essence, the definition of poverty (Aigbokhan, 2000), which
can be looked at from two different perspectives, pennilessness and
powerlessness.
Pennilessness means both insufficiencies of cash and
deficiency of resources of all types while powerlessness means the individual’s
life seems to them to be governed by forces or persons outside their control
(Ijaiya et al., 2011). Nigeria is one
of the 20 poorest countries in the world with over 66% of the population living
below the poverty line (see Figure 1)
(Lanre-Abass, 2008; Anyanwu, 2012,). Poor women of childbearing age are at a
higher risk of being malnourished and deprived of bare necessities, thereby
potentially making them more prone to poor maternal health and eventually
death.
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| Figure 1 :Trend in National poverty incidence in Nigeria (Anyanwu, 2012) |
Another eventuality of a high poverty rate is that many of
the women are subjected to infections, due to the unhealthy environments in
which they live (Fatusi, 2004). Also, these women are less likely to use
qualified health care attendants and services due to the unaffordability of
these services (McCarthy & Maine, 1992; Fatusi, 2004).
Lessons learnt from the implementation of the United Nations
Population Fund country programmes, show that an increase in individual and
household income will lead to an improvement in the way these people access and
employ basic social services, which include health and education (Chimbwete et al., 2012). Insights such as these
should aim to inform decision makers about the plight of their constituents and
DO SOMETHING.
As always please feel free to share your comments.
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