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Microfinance programs can help improve the health of people living in third world countries. It's often said that the things which determine whether we're healthy or sick are very complex and have less to do with what medicine does to us than whether we have money in our pockets and an education. An example of this was published recently in The Lancet. It was a South African trial of microfinance. Microfinance is where small loans are given to poor families usually through women to start little businesses and enterprises. The best schemes also have regular meetings with the women training them in various skills for success. South Africa is a dangerous place for poor women. Perhaps one in three pregnant women are HIV positive and they also experience high levels of domestic violence from their partners. A group of researchers did a controlled trial of microfinance and fortnightly learning sessions in extremely poor villages in Limpopo province. The microfinance initiative was associated with a halving of intimate partner violence rates but had little effect on rates of unprotected sex and HIV infection. You'd have thought they'd have gone together and it's unclear why they didn't. So making women less vulnerable economically is only part of the story.
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