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The need for the poor, the marginalised and socially excluded to live healthier and longer lives has in recent times become paramount in the development literature and policy discussions seeking to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In response to this, attempts are being made to redirect the research focus to examine socio-economic factors underpinning disease occurrence and ill health for health planning policies and practices to benefit the poor and vulnerable in society. Tliis paper explores the relationship between socio-economic conditions and health outcomes. It identifies and examines through participatory rural assessment techniques, basic socio- economic factors acting as significant pathways through which poverty increases the susceptibility of rural households to diseases. It seeks to address the reasons why the poor are poorer in health in rural communities of the Amansie West district of Ghana. This paper thus emphasises how social stratification and inequalities could affect quality of life of people in any given society, hence supporting the theory of social suffering and its implications on societal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined the relationship between religiosity and health-seeking belief outcomes in Ghana. Drawing on in-depth interviews and group discussions with informal prayer group members and leaders in Accra, Ghana, the study explores participants' conceptions of illnesses and the significance of the forest as a place of gathering and healing. There are several reasons why prayer group members in this study make their way to the forest, including finding a serene sacred space in a crowded city to confront the vicissitudes of life. Disease, for the prayer group members, is seen to hold both spiritual and physical origins, inspiring them to seek both biomedical and spiritual forms of care. Interviewees believed hospitals could help with physical diseases, but saw spiritual diseases as requiring spiritual solutions. There was a salient differentiation expressed between treatment and healing, however: doctors can treat certain conditions, but only God heals. While there is a need for public health practitioners to better engage spiritual/religious leaders and their followers with mainstream biomedicine, and to challenge some of their misconceptions and mistrust, attending to and understanding the role of religious beliefs, and religious spaces, in everyday conceptions of health, would strengthen the promotion of both men's and women's health in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]