ArticleInternational health2025
Health literacy and household financial loss on malaria treatment for children under five in Ghana: a patients' perspective.
Article in International health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- What is the impact of health literacy on healthcare costs? A systematic review and evidence synthesis.BMJ open · 2025Pooled it
- Linking health literacy to malaria prevention and treatment behaviours: evidence from a community-based study in Gabon.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Socio-economic inequalities in malaria prevalence among under-five children in Ghana between 2016 and 2019: a decomposition analysis.Malaria journal · 2025Review
- Designing and deploying caller tunes on mobile phones to promote malaria vaccine uptake in Africa: can the technology acceptance model (TAM) help?Malaria journal · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundInadequate health literacy increases medical costs and leads to poor health outcomes. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence of such associations in sub-Saharan Africa. This study investigates how the household cost of malaria in children under five in Ghana varies based on different levels of health literacy.
methodsA cross-sectional survey involving 1270 caregivers of children under five was conducted. The survey included health literacy questionnaire and several pieces of sociodemographic and behavioural variables.
resultsWe created seven caregiver health literacy profiles by scoring nine dimensions. The mean total cost for managing malaria among respondents was US$20.29 per episode. The total household cost for caregivers with high health literacy (Profile 1) (US$24.77) was higher than all other profiles, with the lowest cost (US$17.93) among the low health literacy profile (Profile 6). Compared with Profile 4, caregivers with high health literacy (Profile 1) spent more on managing malaria in children, while those with the lowest health literacy (Profile 7) spent less.
conclusionThe current study presents a snapshot of malaria treatment costs, and argues that low health literacy may lead to increased costs due to possible reinfections from delayed healthcare use. There is a need for longitudinal studies to understand causal relationship between health literacy and household expenses on malaria treatment to inform policy development and interventions. LAY SUMMARY: This study explores the impact of caregiver health literacy levels on the cost of managing malaria incidents in children under five in Ghana. High health-literate caregivers incurred the highest total household cost at US$24.77, with US$17.93 incurred by lower health-literate caregivers per malaria episode.
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