Wealth inequalities malaria parasitaemia and child anaemia in Nigeria

In Nigeria, anaemia risk among de facto children aged 6–59 months shows a wealth gradient, with parasitaemia-mediated indirect differences of 3.4 percentage points in 2015 and 2.0 in 2021.

• Why it matters: It is unclear how much of Nigeria’s child anaemia inequality across household wealth is explained by current microscopy-confirmed malaria parasitaemia versus other infectious, nutritional, genetic, and social drivers.
• What they did: Using Nigeria Malaria Indicator Surveys from 2010, 2015, and 2021, the study compared the poorest quintile with richer and richest quintiles, modeling altitude-adjusted anaemia and estimating mediated effects via g-computation with 20 chained-equation imputations and 1,000 Rao-Wu bootstrap replicates.
• The result: The poorest-to-richer/richest contrast is linked to higher anaemia risk in 2015 and 2021, and a smaller positive parasitaemia-mediated component is compatible with mediation, though results rely on assumptions and do not prove that removing parasitaemia would eliminate the inequality.

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