wenBLOG

…say the people of the Third World to all of those celebrities so hell bent on solving designer diseases one at a time.  At least that’s what Laurie Garrett from the Council on Foreign Relations said on the Marketplace Morning Report this morning.

Garrett was making the point that while it’s all well and good that Bono and Bill Gates are jet-setting around the globe drawing attention and much needed funds for their AIDS initiatives, those efforts have had a related and significantly negative impact on global health as whole.  Garrett’s essay - The Challenge of Global Health, published in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine says:

“Thanks to a recent extraordinary rise in public and private giving, today more money is being directed toward the world’s poor and sick than ever before. But unless these efforts start tackling public health in general instead of narrow, disease-specific problems — and unless the brain drain from the developing world can be stopped — poor countries could be pushed even further into trouble, in yet another tale of well-intended foreign meddling gone awry.”

In her interview this morning Garrett cited the incredible increase in infant mortality rates and decrease in lifespan that is occurring in the countries of Africa’s sub-Saharan region which she says are a direct result of the massive attention being focused on specific diseases like AIDS.  While programs for HIV testing and prevention are burgeoning, attention to health concerns as simple (and deadly) as dysentery are going unchecked.  Because these celebrity causes drive so much funding earmarked only for high profile diseases, some of the ones which were coming under control only a few years ago are now running rampant and groups like the World Health Organization (WHO) are left with very little money to battle basic problems.

Garrett’s piece is well worth a read.  Here’s a roundtable discussion about her essay.