| South Africa has been ranked as the world's most unequal nation by the Thomas Piketty-backed World Inequality Lab. Nowhere is that more evident than in its Covid-19 hospitalization statistics over the course of the pandemic. A Black South African who found themselves in hospital with Covid-19 was 1.3 times more likely to die than a White citizen of the country, according to a study that analyzed almost 440,000 hospitalizations over the first four waves of infection. They were also, on average, 11 years younger, at 50, and less likely to get access to a ventilator, intensive care unit or supplementary oxygen. A life of poverty means that many have comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension, making them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Black South Africans are also more likely to be infected with HIV or tuberculosis, or both. That disparity is due to history.  A rural vaccination drive in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg In a nation that was ruled by a White minority for over three centuries before apartheid, a system of institutionalized racial discrimination, ended in 1994, most poor people are Black and the majority of White people are comparatively rich. That means a far greater proportion of White South Africans have access to private health care while the majority of Black citizens are forced to rely on underfunded, overburdened and ill-equipped public facilities. Even poorer White South Africans, who relied on government hospitals, were more likely to get access to a ventilator than their Black peers, many of whom live in remote rural areas far from modern hospitals. Racial disparities were also evident in other parts of the world, including the US, where Black people had a higher burden of chronic disease well before the pandemic as access to quality health care has long missed marginalized communities. The different experiences South Africans had of the pandemic were also reflected across gender and geography. Young Black women, the most economically marginalized group in South Africa, had higher mortality than men of the same age. People treated in health facilities in the Eastern Cape, the country's poorest province, were 1.9 times more likely to die than those in hospitals in the relatively affluent Western Cape. "Race and socio-economic status were important determinants of access to health care during apartheid when health systems were fragmented and discriminatory, the authors of the study, which was led by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, wrote. "Racial differences continue to impact access to health care today." — Antony Sguazzin | 
No comments:
Post a Comment