Growing inequality paired with infectious diseases rise

Rising inequality and growing deprivation have coincided with a "dramatic" leap in cases of infectious diseases in New Zealand over the last two decades, a study revealed Monday. The study by the University of Otago showed admissions to hospitals of people with infectious diseases had risen by 51 percent over the 20 years from 1989 to 2008. The cases accounted for 27 percent of all acute hospitalizations from 2004 to 2008, while hospitalizations of people with non-infectious diseases rose by only 7 percent. Lead investigator Associate Professor Michael Baker said he was "taken aback" by the size of the increase. "What we expected to see was a steady decline in serious infectious diseases and a rise in admissions for chronic diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, which is the expected pattern for a developed country," Baker said in a statement. "Instead we found infectious diseases had risen far faster than chronic diseases. New Zealand now has the double burden of rising rates of both infectious and chronic diseases." The researchers analyzed 5 million overnight hospital admissions, tracking trends across major population groups, according to age, ethnicity and socio-economic status, said the statement. It found that most categories of infectious disease had risen, driven mainly by increases in respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal infections. The largest increase in infectious diseases was in the 1990s, followed by some improvement in 2001 to 2005, followed by another increase. The rise in the 1990s coincided with a period of rapidly rising income and wealth inequalities associated with major restructuring of the New Zealand economy. "All New Zealanders pay the price of rising infectious diseases. There are those who are directly affected by these infections. But these contagious diseases affect all sectors of society. The increased rates are adding 17,000 hospitalizations a year and tens of millions of dollars in avoidable health care costs," Baker said. The research showed the indigenous Maori and Pacific Island peoples were more than twice as likely as the European population to be hospitalized with a serious infectious disease, while people in the most deprived communities had almost three times the risk compared with those living in the most affluent areas. "Fundamentally what this new research reveals is that the poorest sections of our community are bearing the brunt of an increasing burden of infectious disease, with children and older people in particular ending up in hospital; this is especially so for Maori and Pacific peoples," he said. "Because Maori and Pacific populations tend to be over- represented in the poorest suburbs there is a multiplier effect regarding infectious disease risk. This has seen a 77 percent increase in hospitalisations for Maori and a 112 percent increase for Pacific peoples from the most deprived areas over the last two decades." Baker said an example was rheumatic fever, which had almost disappeared as a childhood disease in Western Europe and North America, but was still a serious threat for Maori and Pacific children in New Zealand, causing heart disease and early death in adulthood. The research was carried in the international medical journal, The Lancet, with a comment by researchers that "the health of indigenous people in New Zealand has historically been poorer than the rest of the population and these findings suggest that a rising burden of infectious disease may be leading to a widening of this gap."