IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v56y2003i2p219-234.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inherited burden of disease: agricultural dams and the persistence of bloody urine (Schistosomiasis hematobium) in the Upper East Region of Ghana, 1959-1997

Author

Listed:
  • Hunter, John M.

Abstract

A major agricultural development project was commissioned to celebrate Ghana's independence in 1957. In the Upper Region along the border with Upper Volta now named Burkina Faso, a total of 185 clay-core dams were constructed in 15 years to enhance village water supplies during the 6-month dry season. In a concentrated area of N.E. Ghana (now the Upper East Region) no fewer than 104 dams were erected in only 3 years. The beneficial impacts of the dams are indisputable, and life today would be unthinkable without them, despite severe problems of neglect of maintenance. Equally undeniable has been a negative disease impact whereby the regional rate of schistosomiasis tripled in 1 or 2 years from 17% to 51% prevalence. Thus, an agriculturally induced hyperendemicity of "red water" or "bloody urine" disease was established. To test the longevity of community disease impact, a survey of hematuria (bloody urine) was conducted in the same areas in 1997. It showed a 40-year ecological entrenchment of elevated levels of schistosomiasis, that is, seemingly permanent alteration of regional disease ecology. The consequences of planning negligence have left a generational impact in that hematuria has become a "rite of passage" for young boys and girls. Unprepared and overburdened rural health care systems are ill-equipped in the face of competing demands to respond to the presence of schistosomiasis. Yet excellent medication is available to break the transmission cycle provided that there is a sufficiency of political will, accompanied by effective, inter-sectoral campaign coordination.

Suggested Citation

  • Hunter, John M., 2003. "Inherited burden of disease: agricultural dams and the persistence of bloody urine (Schistosomiasis hematobium) in the Upper East Region of Ghana, 1959-1997," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 219-234, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:56:y:2003:i:2:p:219-234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(02)00021-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martine AUDIBERT, 2008. "Endemic diseases and agricultural productivity: Challenges and policy response," Working Papers 200823, CERDI.
    2. Craig, Sienna R. & Adams, Lisa V. & Spielberg, Stephen P. & Campbell, Benjamin, 2009. "Pediatric therapeutics and medicine administration in resource-poor settings: A review of barriers and an agenda for interdisciplinary approaches to improving outcomes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 1681-1690, December.
    3. Ntajal, Joshua & Evers, Mariele & Kistemann, Thomas & Falkenberg, Timo, 2021. "Influence of human–surface water interactions on the transmission of urinary schistosomiasis in the Lower Densu River basin, Ghana," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    4. Miller, Veronica B. & Ramde, Emmanuel W. & Gradoville, Robert T. & Schaefer, Laura A., 2011. "Hydrokinetic power for energy access in rural Ghana," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 671-675.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:56:y:2003:i:2:p:219-234. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.