I'll see your Malaria, and raise you one Hookworm

Several years ago, when I was working in East Timor, one of the local staffers at my office came to me in the market on a Saturday, frantically asking if I could give him a ride to the hospital. Our conversation started as a chaotic mix of English and Indonesian, and ended in some spontaneously improvised sign language. I thought I was going to be giving someone very sick a ride to the local hospital, which made sense, because only one ambulance was available for the entire district. But I was confused when my friend immediately directed me to turn into the hospital parking lot. He ran inside, and in a few minutes returned carrying a dead boy.

On the ride to his village, he started to calm down, and I was able to understand part of what he said. The boy was his nephew. The village he was taking him to was nearly three hours away on foot, and the sun was setting. The boy's father was hours away in the capital city looking for work and couldn't be reached. The boy died of malaria, a preventable, curable disease. He was 12 years old.

Malaria and other diseases that have historically been devastating are now all but obsolete in the developed world. Malaria, for example, once plagued parts of the U.S. Likewise, a disease that was problematic and widespread in parts of the U.S., namely the deep American South, was hookworm, a parasite that enters the body through the skin and causes intestinal problems and anemia, among other things. It's not as fatal as malaria, but it is debilitating.

In 1909, as a result of a $1 million gift from John D. Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease was formed. As a result of campaigns by the foundation in the South and Appalachia, the disease became all but obsolete in the United States within five years. Eventually the efforts expanded abroad, but unfortunately the disease is still present in much of the developing world.

Critics might speculate that the Rockefeller Commission wanted to curb hookworm in the American South in order to create stronger markets. This may be the case, and it's also probably true that anemic people don't make very productive workers. Whatever the motives, the outcome was positive enough to make the campaign worthwhile. Likewise, self-interested corporations should consider the tremendous possibilities of new markets in the developing world by contributing to efforts to eradicate diseases, which would help create stability, increase productivity, expand economies and create new consumers.

I suppose a fair question here is, "What's your point, Jonny?" The point is that we sometimes view a problem like Malaria as overwhelming, something that is impossible to tackle in the developing world. But often eradication of a deadly disease just takes and innovative approach and a concerted effort.

Malaria has a profound effect on the developing world. But there's reason to be optimistic. Huge monetary gifts from stinking rich philanthropists have their place, but some very effective modern campaigns, such as Nothing But Nets, give regular people like you and me the ability to make meaningful contributions. If you need to remember why you should, read this.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't always work, but it's worth taking a minute to applaud the innovative approach to problem solving at Nothing But Nets.

Sorry Mr. Petty, Sometimes you do have to live like a refugee

It's no secret that a massive Iraqi refugee crisis has been building for several years. Saddam Hussein may have been a genocidal maniac, but his tyranny managed to keep the sectarian violence in Iraq suppressed. The apparent lack of foresight about this problem by the "planners" of the Iraq invasion helped unleash this sleeping hatred, and now nearly 2 million Iraqi refugees have been forced to flee. Many now live in camps in Jordan, Egypt and Syria, a situation that could have potential consequences for regional stability. Of the 2 million, fewer than 3,000 have been resettled in the U.S. since 2003 when Hussein's regime was overthrown.

Resettling refugees in the States is difficult, no doubt, but 3,000 in five years? I'm no math wiz, but I think if you found the lowest common denominator and expressed that as a fraction it would be something like a really small number over a really big number.

Whether or not you supported the invasion -- and let's face it, many of you did -- you have to recognize the smell of poo poo when it's sitting on your face. And I know, we can all bash the current administration yet again, but I'm now more inclined to listen to the argument presented by Alasdair Roberts in the latest issue of Foreign Policy: that we, the American public, are to blame for the way Iraq is going. After all, this is still a democracy -- sort of. Perhaps you are one of the few who care, but we must admit that the public has been sleepwalking for quite some time now.

One thing the refugee situation is making painfully obvious is that we could care less about the Pottery Barn rule, that quirky phrase supposedly coined by NY Times Columnist, Thomas Friedman: You break it, you buy it. Colin Powell later used the phrase in an attempt to communicate to the administration the seriousness of overthrowing a government. I'm sure the latent sectarianism must have seemed trivial at the time.

I think Stephen Colbert's May, 2007 explanation of the rule seems more accurate:
"At Pottery Barn, if you knock over a lamp, you have to glue it back together, even if when you're done it looks terrible and it doesn't work. Oh, and you have to stay in the store forever. Oh, and it's an exploding lamp."

Bad Junta

The ruling Burmese junta showed once again how uncooperative it is by expelling the top U.N. resident ambassador to the country on Friday. According to Reuters:

U.N. officials said on Friday that Charles Petrie had been summoned to the former Burma's new capital, Naypyitaw, for an official dressing down for a statement he released on the Oct. 24 United Nations Day. After the meeting, Petrie and his colleagues were given a letter saying the military government would not be renewing his credentials, which expire "pretty much now," a Yangon-based diplomat said.

The military government continues to prove how rigid and backwards it is by attempting to restrict information from entering or leaving the country. Perhaps with internet access shut down and Petrie expelled, the junta leadership believes that it can continue to silence the opposition, at least internationally, and that the silence will eventually lead to an international forgetfulness. It's an interesting card trick: take it off the table, and it ceases to exist.

Unfortunately, with the modern attention span and the schizophrenic news cycle, silence can lead to forgetfulness. But what the medieval junta fails to understand is that this time is much different than 1988. It is virtually impossible in today's information climate to keep all of the nearly 50 million Burmese silent.

The torture, kidnapping, murder and intimidation works to a point, but the modestly defiant demonstration by Buddhist monks on Thursday, just one month after the violent repression of widespread protests, shows that the population is determined to keep the issue of Burmese democracy alive.

Here is a previous post on Burma.
And here is another.