Tuberculosis Rates Plunge When Families Living In Poverty Get Monthly Cash Payout
“What if the best medicine isn’t a pill or vaccine — but it’s cold cash?
There’s a growing body of research that suggests economic programs that give money to very poor people can have major health benefits. Now, a new study — out on Friday in Nature Medicine — proves this approach can work when it comes to the world’s deadliest infectious disease: tuberculosis, which killed more than 1.25 million people in 2023.
The study is impressive in its scale. Researchers combined two Brazilian datasets — one from the Ministry of Health and one that tracks social programs for the poorest half of the population — enabling them to zero in on 54 million people in Brazil living in poverty. In this group, 44% of them received cash each month from a government program while 56% did not. The families that received the cash were significantly less likely to contract TB. Among the extremely poor in this category, TB cases and deaths dropped by more than 50% and in the Indigenous population the drop was even more dramatic: more than 60%.”
Read more at NPR.