Released on Thursday, the letter predicts a long list of breakthroughs in global health and development by 2030, including long-elusive milestones such as Africa being able to feed itself rather than depend on food imports. However, none of this will be achieved easily. From Reuters:
“You need some breakthroughs,” Melinda Gates said in an interview.
The world’s wealthiest foundation had helped produce big advances before, including vaccines against the childhood killers rotavirus and pneumonia, making vaccines “our greatest success,” Bill Gates said in the interview.
Established in 2000, the foundation distributed $3.6 billion in grants in 2013, in particular for global health and development, and had $42.3 billion in assets as of late 2014.
“We are doubling down on the bet we made 15 years ago, and picking ambitious goals for what’s possible 15 years from now,” they wrote. “The lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years” than ever before.
In 1990, 10 percent of the world’s children died before age 5. That number is now 5 percent. By 2030, only one in 40 will die that early thanks to healthier childcare practices such as breastfeeding, better sanitation and vaccines.
In the next 15 years, they believe farmers in Africa will have access to better fertilizer and to drought- and disease-resistant crops, allowing yields to double. And donated drugs, such as those distributed free to 800 million people last year, can stop polio, elephantiasis and other scourges.
The foundation is also one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization, which has been slammed for a chaotic and belated response to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic last year.
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Global Health and Development Beat
In Kenya, the rise of drug resistant bacteria could reverse the gains made by medical science over diseases that were once treatable. Kenyans could be at risk of fatalities as a result if the power in antibiotics is not preserved.
Sierra Leone said on Thursday it would reopen schools across the country in March, with the deadly Ebola epidemic slowing throughout west Africa.
Even though the Ebola outbreak in West Africa continues, the U.N. says it’s time to plan for the recovery of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A joint mission has just completed its assessment in Sierra Leone.
“We cannot be counted as citizens of the 21st century” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a hard-hitting message to the country during the launch of a nationwide campaign to save and educate girls.
Cambodia has managed to reduce poverty in many parts of the country but admits it is still falling behind on many of its United Nations development targets as a deadline to reach such goals approaches.
A bill that would prohibit using federal money to pay for “any abortion” or for “health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion” has been approved by the US House of Representatives.
Vapor produced by electronic cigarettes can contain a surprisingly high concentration of formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
An outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in Nigeria has spread to 21 commercial farms in seven different states, with more than 140,000 birds having been exposed to the virus, the agriculture minister said on Thursday.
California health officials say more than 4 dozen cases of measles have been diagnosed in the state — a result of an outbreak that started at Disneyland. Most who got sick were not vaccinated.
The United Nations asked governments on Thursday to submit plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions as the building blocks of a deal due in Paris in December to limit global warming, after scientists said 2014 was the hottest year on record.
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Spotlight on PSI
The annual World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, is happening this week. PSI President and CEO Karl Hofmann is there making sure global health issues get the attention they deserve from global business and political leaders. He spent a few minutes with HubCulture.com’s Edie Lush speaking about the good and bad news about the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the importance of working with the private sector, and the future of family planning—including the possible emergence of an unlikely ally. Watch the whole the 4-minute interview here.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Instead of asking why there was little international attention for the attacks carried out by Boko Haram in Baga, Nigeria, we should be asking why there is not attention on places like Nigeria in the first place, says photographer Glenna Gordon in Vanity Fair. She challenges the press writing:
While the citizens of Baga were running for their lives, Jonathan was launching his reelection campaign in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, nearly 1,700 miles southwest. Lagos is a bustling city of 20 million whose residents often have more in common with mourning Parisians than with fisherman of Baga.
It’s important to understand just how remote Baga is. To get to Baga from Lagos, you’d have to first take a 90-minute flight to Abuja. From there, the drive to Maidurugi, the biggest city in Borno state, is a treacherous 12 hours. The drive might have taken less time a few years ago, but now there are countless military checkpoints, potholes, and ambush opportunities along the long road. There’s a small airport in Maiduguri, but it’s been closed to commercial air traffic since Boko Haram attacked it, in December 2013.
(snip)
The formula that ends in “Never forget” demands that we pay attention, that we do care. But what happens when we fulfill our end of the bargain and atrocities continue?
The fate of the Northern Nigerians isn’t in the hands of the Twitter masses. Those who decry how much more attention Charlie Hebdo gets than Baga should question the utility of attention. If caring just means tweeting, and tweeting doesn’t result in all that much, shouldn’t we demand more? Should we demand that attention is paid not just to death tolls, but also to the lived experiences of all people?
On the first page of her school notebook, one of the kidnapped girls, Elizabeth Joseph, wrote out the definition of Nigerian government: “When we use the term ‘nigerian government’ we usually mean the sum total of people and institution that make and enforce law within nigerian.”
The Nigerian government failed Elizabeth, just as it has failed the people of Baga.
The question isn’t, “Why are we paying less attention to these deaths?” The question must be, “Why did we pay less attention to their lives?”
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Capital Events
Friday
8:00 AM – Collaborate: The Innovator’s Conference – Fosterly
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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