Diseases have a considerable effect on individuals, their families, the economy, society, a country, and the entire world. For an individual, contracting a disease impacts one’s health and lifestyle; it can interfere with their ability to stand, walk, work, and have a social life. Generally, illness negatively influence patients’ health, functioning, and disability status (Won & Song, 2021). In addition, it can result in additional strain due to career interruptions and economic challenges due to the high costs of treatment. Secondly, sickness produces disequilibrium in the family structure, which may persist until members make necessary adjustments. Generally, disease impacts the emotional and psychological functioning, interpersonal relationships, leisure, and financial resources of a family. Every individual has a specific role to play in the household. Therefore, the illness of one member disrupts the daily functioning of the entire unit since others are forced to change their lifestyles to fill the gap and support the sick person (Won & Song, 2021). Furthermore, disease increases anxiety among people close to the patient, which may be misinterpreted as the reluctance or lack of interest to help the sick person.
Diseases affect the economy in various ways, including mortality, productivity, and treatment costs. Good health translates to healthy workers, increasing labor productivity and thus higher incomes (Bloom et al., 2020). Sickness significantly impacts productivity due to debilitating chronic diseases, deaths, decreased foreign investment, and reduced productivity. Regarding society, diseases affect where and how humans live, their cultures, and daily behaviors. Infections change the number of individuals and structure of communities due to deaths and a possible spread of rumors about the disease, resulting in social panic. Additionally, epidemics impact nations through the consequent tax revenue declines and increased expenditure on resources to curb the diseases. Consequently, this results in fiscal stress, especially when tax systems require improvements and fiscal constraints are high. Finally, diseases affect the world by increasing mortality and morbidity across geographical regions, slowing down economic growth (Rocco et al., 2021). Reduced mortality rates increase life expectancy, thus favor human and physical capital investments, which majorly drives sustained economic growth.
References
Bloom, D., Kuhn, M., & Prettner, K. (2020). How to mitigate the economic impacts of infectious diseases.
Rocco, L., Fumagalli, E., Mirelman, A., & Suhrcke, M. (2021). Mortality, morbidity, and economic growth. Plos One, 16(5), e0251424.
Won, H., & Song, W. J. (2021). Impact and disease burden of chronic cough. Asia Pacific Allergy, 11(2), e22.