African child mortality: The best story in development
economist.com
economist.com
Of course reduction in infant mortality is good, but it can be coupled with problems later if family planning is not also brought into families at the exact same time.
If family planning is delayed by one generation compared with the reduction in infant mortality, a country's population can rise exponentially very quickly which is highly destabilizing.
The Vatican and others stand in the way to realizing family planning everywhere...
(http://www.irinnews.org/photo/Slideshow/43/Too-Poor-to-Farm)
This is great news - some really simple interventions make dramatic reductions in death rates. Things like "soap and hot water to wash hands" or "boil the stones used to cut the cord" have made a big difference.
Still, there's always more that can be done.
> The maternal mortality ratio in Ethiopia is 676 for every 100,000 births. This compares to an average of 290 per 100,000 births in developing countries, and 14 per 100,000 in developed countries,
(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95356/ETHIOPIA-Still-too-many...)
And when you've prevented children dying in childbirth you need to ensure distribution of micronutirents.
(http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201112300839360722/A-y...)
Diarrhoea is the second biggest killer of children. A cheap course of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) costs about $0.50 us cents; this could save about three quarters of the 1.5 million deaths each year.
Recognising the weird fact that coca-cola gets everywhere while ORS doesn't, an aid worker decided to use the powerful distribution networks of commercial companies to distribute ORS.
(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the-fizz-...)
He's not doing this through charity or subsidy. He's found a neat gap.
> Almost 30 years after British aid worker Simon Berry first pondered the Coca-Cola conundrum while working in Zambia, he is about to turn the puzzle into an opportunity he hopes will drastically reduce child mortality by adopting some of these strategies. And he wants to do so through commerce, rather than charity, or even, in the long term, through subsidy.
> Berry has isolated a gap in the market, literally in the spaces between crated Coca-Cola bottles trucked and biked to villages all over the developing world.
Generally speaking, when a country develops to a certain point it gets what's called a demographic dividend[1]. The population has been growing rapidly in the past, so there aren't that many old people to take care of. With wealth people start having less babies, though, so there are also a relatively small number of children to take care of relative to the number of working adults. Countries in this position can, if they manage to avoid messing up, grow very rapidly.
High population growth causes slow economic growth /per capita/ (because the available income is distributed among more people).
In the book "Poor Economics" the authors show how poor parents tent to invest most resources they have in only child's education. All the other children get much less education and therefore only low paying jobs, thus remain poor. Less population growth would have a direct positive economic effect on the society's average level of education.
High population growth is also very expensive in terms of public services, you need to build more schools, hospitals, police, etc. All that investment in /quantity/ prevents you from investing it in /quality/.
Anyway once a non-industrialized population reaches a population saturation point such that more people cannot create more agricultural produce (like here in Bangladesh) there's a squeeze on per capita economic output of the country. Sure the extra labor can now be used to industrialize, in theory. But the problem is without capital to industrialize with (as is the case here) a cycle of poverty can form which gets worse.
This was a big factor in the start of the Congolese Civil War. In Rwanada after the the genocide the perpetrators fled into Congo and many Hutus, fearing that the Tutsi forces would want revenge, fled with them. In the Congo the genocidaires were able to confiscate and resell part of the aid, and charge rent to aid agencies, and use the money buy weapons to arm the people there in the hopes of retaking the country. The new Tutsi Rwandan government, not willing to let this happen, decided to invade. And since Mobutu of Zaire had been harboring insurgents from all the other neighboring countries, they all decided to help. Thus began the Congo Civil War. However, rereading the section in Wikipedia on the refugee crisis it seems that Médecins Sans Frontières and most of the other independant aid organizations were smart enough to realize what was happening and leave so they couldn't be used - and it was the mostly UN that was still contributing money and supplies when the fighting started[2]. So maybe you should give money to aid organization after all.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis
And if the effect of warlords looting villages for their bed nets is not large enough to make a significant negative impact on the charity's effectiveness, then it still seems like one of the best possible uses of money to do good in the world.
As long as Africa has to live of what we want to give them, they will always suffer.
If anything lend the money to make their own nets.
Judging from your profile you are Danish. If so, you have benefited from the colonisation of Africa by your ancestors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Gold_Coast).
(Don't mistake me for a reparations supporter, but I do believe it's absurd to believe that "Africa" is where it is through its own actions and should therefore be solely responsible for growth and development.)
If you are thinking about the slave trade (and when people talk about Africa a lot are) just remember that the europeans brought the slaves from other, stronger, tribes: meaning Africa was itself as responsible as was my ancestors.
Except it is of course complete bullshit. A continent cannot have any guilt, nor can should I be guilty for what my ancestors have done. The only people responsible are the people involved. A man cannot be guilty because of the blood in his veins.
As for how much Africa was hurt take a look at present day Zimbabwe -- it is a completely failed state. Back when the evil white farmers were occupying it, it was a net producer of food and the breadbasket of Africa.
Chocolate came from Latin America and Tea came from Asia.
For better examples try: metal ores, natural rubber and a whole slew of other compounds that were (and are) basic ingredients for our industry.
When you study the history of the continent you will see that a good part of the reason for its present levels of political instability, inequality and poverty has to do with an imbalance of power and wealth created due to colonialism (and associated racism).
If you think all that the colonial powers did was buy and capture slaves I think you should go do some reading and educate yourself about the impact of colonialism.
The world is definitely improving - from a health perspective. Of course you could talk about overpopulation as a chronic global problem as well, but in my opinion education on birth control will improve enough over the next few decades to help combat that.
Something like malaria nets sounds cheap and simple enough to be a plausible driver. But even then, to a malnourished kid the nutrition probably matters first.
Even extensive efforts, occurring amid improvements on the fundamentals, would probably be lost in the noise.
EDIT: Why is that? Why does doom sell?
Also consider that this entire statement is false. We hear good news all the time. I generally consider much on HN to be good, like this story. I see good things even on regular cable news. We have to be careful to see if we set up our own filters unintentionally. If all you think you hear is doom, go out of your way to find the good. You might. E surprised what you find.