Malaria, a completely preventable and treatable disease, remains one of the biggest killers in Sub-Saharan Africa today. The objectives of this study were to describe the impact of malaria on a small rural community in Uganda (Bufuula) and to implement and evaluate a malaria prevention program (subsidised insecticide treated nets with an accompanying education session). In January 2006, a survey of 202 households (100% response rate) was conducted, and meetings held with the Village Council, which revealed that malaria was the community's major cause of morbidity and mortality, and showed there was a lack of access to preventative measures. Furthermore, 34% of each household's income was allocated to the burden of malaria. A malaria education and mosquito net distribution session was held in January 2006, which was attended by over 500 villagers who purchased 480 heavily-subsidised long lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs). Home visits were conducted 1 week later to ensure the LLINs were hung correctly. A follow-up survey was conducted in January 2007. There was a rise in net ownership following the program (18% to 51%, P < 0.0001) and lower rates of childhood malaria prevalence (14%) than reported in Ugandan national statistics (40%). However, only half the nets owned were being used correctly by those most vulnerable to the illness. The findings suggest that mosquito nets must be provided with an effective education program and may be more successful if conducted in whole districts simultaneously rather than on a per-community basis. The evidence for super-targeting strategies for those most vulnerable is also considered. These findings provide important lessons and considerations for other wide-scale malaria prevention programs.

Can unanimous (or nearly so) agreement be reached by members of a diverse community on a system of justice in distribution used to guide the re-distribution of endowments within this community? Arrow’s impossibility result suggests that this question will receive a negative answer if certain conditions are imposed on the procedures that a community employs in the attempt to make important community decisions. These conditions are reconsidered by allowing for various types of under-insured risk and uncertainty that face members of communities—especially communities in developing countries. Next, two types of uncertainty are allowed for in the designs of various game-theoretic experiments to determine if groups of individuals can come to agree unanimously on a single system of justice in distribution. (These experiments are based on those devised by Frohlich, Oppenheimer and Eavey, and Frohlich and Oppenheimer.) The participants in these experiments are asked to choose one out of four reasonable alternative systems of justice. As for the participants, they are drawn from various sections of Filipino society. The experimental results obtained indicate that groups of individuals, who possess certain characteristics (but nevertheless who hold diverse views on matters of social importance) do agree unanimously to choose a single system of justice in distribution under relevant conditions of uncertainty. The system of justice agreed upon is a version of Rawls’s first principle of justice and the priority rule—a principle that is related to Popper’s principle of minimising avoidable suffering. The participants also explain their decisions in language that reflects that they have an understanding of the uncertain economic and social realities that members of their community face. In the light of these experimental results it is indicated what alternative conditions should be used, in place of some of the Arrovian conditions, in order to generate possibility results. It is also emphasised that this possibility result need not be satisfied in all communities. This is so since the moral intuition of members of a community probably will be influence by the cultural and other relevant circumstances to be found in this community, yet these cultural and other relevant circumstances vary across communities.

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Two diverse Filipino village communities were intensively surveyed and then focus-group discussions were held among their members. These discussions indicated that members of the less well-off community, compared with the one which was better-off, see fewer benefits to be derived from investing in education. This information has implications for determining how the level of community well-being should be measured. In addition, those households with better access to credit and basic infrastructure invested more in the education of children. This insight suggests how the design of poverty-alleviation expenditure programmes might be improved in rural Philippines at least.