Date: 2024-04-29 Page is: DBtxt003.php bkTVM009023900
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Burgess Manuscripts
TrueValueMetrics ACTION INFORMATION FOR ALL OF SOCIETY Metrics about the State, Progress and Performance of Society, the Environment and Economy Metrics about Impact on People, Place, Planet and Profit |
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Chapter 2
SYSTEMIC DYSFUNCTION 2-39 THE BUSINESS OF HEALTH It seems that humankind has sought to improve life since the beginning of time ... but progress has been slow. Progress has accelerated in the last few hundred years, but results have been mixed with some progress faster and better than others. |
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Health pandemics
For a while it looked as if the biggest success in post colonial ODA was going to be in the health arena. Health improved a lot as a result of some excellent work in the health sector spearheaded by UNICEF, and guided well by the WHO. The accomplishment of getting almost every child on the planet immunized was impressive and as a result critical diseases like chicken pox, measles and polio were reduced worldwide. Expectation of life increased almost everywhere by about 15 years and almost everywhere reached near 60. An impressive improvement. But there have been new challenges, including HIV-AIDS. This pandemic is reducing expectation of life and the progress achieved is being lost. Botswana, a country badly impacted by HIV-AIDS is expected to have a life expectancy of around 35 years in the next few years. And the health of the economy is translating into the health of the government and its ability to have a working health sector. The expectation is that there will be government health services. In practice there is little or no money. At the end of the colonial era there were many initiatives to address the problem of malaria. Most of these programs terminated. A WHO initiative years ago had a high profile for a while but funding ended and malaria has become a killer in the “south” on a scale similar to AIDS. This is unconscionable given that it is relatively easy to address. Places like the State of Florida in the USA no longer have malaria, simply because funds have been used to control mosquitoes and in turn control malaria. Some parts of the world had success in reducing the burden of malaria ... but essentially almost nothing was done in Africa to control mosquitoes and abate malaria. Death from failed development is running at the rate of perhaps 20,000 a day ... say 7 million a year.How can the world's leaders not pay any attention in the face of this. But then, the world's leaders did not do much in the face of the holocaust in Europe either, or Cambodia's killings, or Rwanda's. |
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