The Impact of Good or Poor Health on Development

1. The impact of good health on
Botswana's development
 There are many ways in which good health
can influence the development of Botswana,
so it is important for the people in a country to
develop good health practices so as to
maintain their healthy status.
 The benefits of having a healthy population
for a developing country such as Botswana
are many and include the following:

2. The impact of good health on
Botswana's development cont.
 Healthy workers have higher productivity. They work
hard and are rarely absent from work.
 Healthy students learn better at school and are rarely
absent from school.
 In other words, they utilise the money that the
government is spending on their education because
they pass and become helpful workers in the
productive activities of the nation.
 Healthy people are happy and usually peaceful.

3. The impact of good health on
Botswana's development
continue
 Healthy people help the government to save
money in the health sector, that is, because they
do not fall sick often, the government does not
spend much money on hospitals and clinics.
 the government has fewer dependants to look
after when more breadwinners are healthy.
 If many people are healthy, much time is spent on
production because less time is spent on helping
sick people.

4.  As you can see, ill-health is one factor that leads to low
productivity which in turn leads to poverty. One social ill
leads to the other — hence the vicious cycle of poverty.

5. The impact of poor health on
Botswana's development
 When most of the people are not well, the development of
a country is drawn back. You can now understand why the
government of Botswana is worried about how fast HIV /
AIDS is spreading within the country. The bad effects of
poor health on Botswana's development include the
following:
 (a) More money is spent on medical care, so there is less
money for other services and forms of development such
as industries, farms, mines and others. Reducing a
family’s work productivity
 Lack of money for medical care may force families to sell
assets to cover the costs of treatment. This increases
poverty and their vulnerability to shocks in the future.

6. The impact of poor health on
Botswana's development
 More working time is wasted due to increased
absenteeism. Research shows that as much as
10% of working time in developing countries is lost
through illness.
 This slows down production of goods and services
and reduces the Gross National Product (GNP)
for the country.
 When sickness attacks breadwinners, they stop
working and their families become the burden of
the government to support.

7. The impact of poor health on
Botswana's development cont.
 Unhealthy workers fail to work properly because
their bodies are too weak to do the job as shown
in the vicious cycle of poverty we studied earlier.
 Unhealthy children fail to concentrate on their
lessons so they end up failing examinations.
When children fail like that, it means that all the
money spent on their education is wasted.
 In a country like Botswana where the parents do
not pay school fees, it is the government which
loses when students fail examinations.