Relevant to my zakat research: Does anyone know if people living in areas which are served by e.g. AMF would be able to purchase ITBNs if AMF weren't distributing them for free?
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This study looks at nets available for sale in Tanzania -this found almost all nets available were untreated, unlike the insecticide-treated nets that AMF distributes. https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12936-023-04726-9
My sense is that they are generally available for purchase in markets; but that doesn’t mean they are affordable or that AMF beneficiaries would counterfactually purchase and use them. In very remote areas they might not be available for purchase at all.
Does that answer your question? I can try and find some citations if necessary, if you can help me understand which part of this answer is the most important.
yeah it answers the question - although I think for the purposes of leaning on this answer I'd probably want someone/something with reputation on the subject (no offence intended).
The point I'm trying to clarify is whether or not funding e.g. AMF means that people are getting something which they couldn't get otherwise. I don't think the idea that they might not choose to purchase them even if they're available is necessarily good enough in this instance.
The reason behind the question is to see whether or not I can apply the reasoning behind the ruling that "yes you can give zakat to a charity which provides free organ transplants to people who can't afford them" to something like AMF.
Regarding the availability of nets, nets are definitely available to purchase, even in places that have universal distribution of bednets. It's not how most people get their nets though; the majority of households in Uganda, Guinea, Nigeria, and Togo (for example) got their nets from mass distributions. To hypothesize some reasons why one might buy nets even in the case of universal distribution — it might be to get more nets per household, nets of a larger size, nets for a new child, etc. In general I think we expect people buying nets to live in richer and less remote areas, which are at less risk of malaria.
Some of the most remote areas (think places which are only reachable by boat, or only seasonally, for example) might not have bednets available for purchase, or at least not all the time. These areas tend to be poorer and at higher risk for malaria, but also harder to study (and harder to reach by bednet distribution programs). I'm not aware of any study that looks at such remote areas specifically.
Regarding the cost of bednets, their purchase is extremely cost-elastic. Cohen and Dupas write “We find that uptake drops by 60 percentage points when the price of ITNs increases f... (read more)