Social and cultural aspects of malaria.

This paper examines the impact of social and cultural factors on malaria control in rural Thailand. It contends that standard vertical malaria control programs tend to ignore local workplace and living conditions instead of recruiting traditional practices into the planning scenario for more effective control. Careful attention to these practices in the context of local economic capacity can serve to offset the common failure to take the major causative factor of poverty into account.

Poverty and malaria: a study in a Thai-Myanmar border area.

An eight-month qualitative study was conducted in 1999 in four villages of Bong Tee subdistrict, Kanchanaburi Province located along the Thai-Myanmar border area using in-depth interviews of key informants and malaria survey as research methodologies. Malaria was a serious problem in 39.6% of the families surveyed in June 1999. The four villages located in a valley covered with forests and small streams which were ideal for malaria epidemic. The structure of the villages has been changed from stable communities to disrupted ones divided along ethnic and class lines. There were 5 ethnic groups dominated by ethnic Karen. Villagers were poor and thus deprived of anti-malaria resources which allow them to remain exposed to malaria.