Associations between Natural Resource Extraction and Incidence of Acute and Chronic Health Conditions: Evidence from Tanzania

Isaac Lyatuu, Georg Loss, Andrea Farnham, Goodluck W. Lyatuu, Günther Fink and Mirko S. Winkler
Additional contact information
Isaac Lyatuu: Environmental Health & Ecological Sciences, Ifakara Health Institute, Dar es Salaam P.O. Box 78373, Tanzania
Georg Loss: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
Andrea Farnham: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
Goodluck W. Lyatuu: Programs Department, Management and Development for Health (MDH), Dar es Salaam P.O. Box 79810, Tanzania
Mirko S. Winkler: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-12

Abstract: Natural resource extraction projects are often accompanied by complex environmental and social-ecological changes. In this paper, we evaluated the association between commodity extraction and the incidence of diseases. We retrieved council (district)-level outpatient data from all public and private health facilities from the District Health Information System (DHIS2). We combined this information with population data from the 2012 national population census and a geocoded list of resource extraction projects from the Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST). We used Poisson regression with random effects and cluster-robust standard errors to estimate the district-level associations between the presence of three types of commodity extraction (metals, gemstone, and construction materials) and the total number of patients in each disease category in each year. Metal extraction was associated with reduced incidence of several diseases, including chronic diseases (IRR = 0.61, CI: 0.47–0.80), mental health disorders (IRR = 0.66, CI: 0.47–0.92), and undernutrition (IRR = 0.69, CI: 0.55–0.88). Extraction of construction materials was associated with an increased incidence of chronic diseases (IRR = 1.47, CI: 1.15–1.87). This study found that the presence of natural resources commodity extraction is significantly associated with changes in disease-specific patient volumes reported in Tanzania’s DHIS2. These associations differed substantially between commodities, with the most protective effects shown from metal extraction.

Keywords: DHIS2; health facility disease diagnoses; health impact assessment; natural resources extraction; routine health management information system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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