Poverty in Mexico

More on the A/H1N1.

I haven’t read much but I came to understand that perhaps the reason that “all but one of the swine flu deaths” occurred in Mexico was something epidemiological, e.g. the Mexicans isn’t as immune to the virus as others in the planet, or that the climate in Mexico worsened the effects of the virus. According to Freakonomics, it’s more to do with the living conditions of many in Mexico:

Why? Rampant poverty, for one, which kept many in Mexico who contracted swine flu from going to the doctor until it was too late. Swine flu isn’t much more dangerous than seasonal flu, it just struck a particularly vulnerable population.

More on the ‘rampant poverty’, courtesy of The Washington Post: Poverty, Tendency to Self-Medicate Help Drive Up Flu Deaths in Mexico

"In Mexico, we are very unaccustomed to going to the hospital. Here, if someone has a cold or anything else, they buy something in the pharmacy, or they leave it be," Flores said. "This is why Mexicans are dying. Because we are very indecisive about going to a hospital until it's too late."

A critical factor, according to specialists here, is that flu victims have delayed checking into hospitals until their condition has deteriorated so much they cannot be saved.

"Some patients arrive late at the hospitals, and to a certain degree this is a problem of education," José Sifuentes-Osorio, an infectious-disease specialist at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, “Many of our people, independent of their socioeconomic situation, self-medicate for three or four days, and they lose precious time."

And the cost of visiting the doctor:

The reasons behind this delay have little to do with apathy. "Delaying medical care is a characteristic of poverty. For people living close to the edge, taking off a day to visit a doctor or staying home sick is literally taking food out of their mouths," said Paul J. Gertler, a professor of economics at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley.

Even worse, and surprising:

But Durán, like many people waiting at the hospital, did not even trust that swine flu was real. Some said it was an elaborate government lie. Others said they would be convinced only if they knew someone who had the virus. "I don't believe any of this," Durán said. "This is all just psychological."