It takes a consultant to fight malaria. Mosquito nets? Nah, advertising.
...the United States' foreign aid agency is spending 95 percent of the money on consultants and less than 5 percent on mosquito nets, drugs and insecticide spraying to fight the disease.[snip]
In his testimony before the subcommittee, Dr. Attaran cited an example of what he considered wastefulness: NetMark, a $65 million, seven-year program for "social marketing" of mosquito nets in Africa.
Instead of giving away goods that prevent disease, like mosquito nets, condoms or rehydrating salts, social marketers buy advertising, conduct public education campaigns and create brands, hoping to promote the goods at low prices in the commercial marketplace. The social marketers maintain that poor people value goods more when they pay for them instead of getting them free, and that small entrepreneurs can benefit from the sales. (My emphasis)
I'm not suggesting there's cronyism involved here, because I don't know who runs the social marketing companies. Nonetheless, it seems kinda dumb to force free-market ideas onto countries where the average daily income may be $5 a day or less. We've got people in the US who split pills in half to make them last twice as long because they can't afford to buy them as often as they should, and the average income here is one helluva lot higher than in sub-Saharan Africa or South America.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 13, 2005 12:00 PMYeah I agree Linky.
Additional stuff that makes me go on a soapbox:
My girlfriend does volunteer work in Africa every other year. She teaches neonatal nurses about neonates, since the death rate is so high for babies.
She has said on numerous times that people except things for free. It is like, here is an American, what can you give us?
They bring over equipment, blankets, medicine, clothes, and educational tools.
Two years later, the stuff is gone or broken and they want more handouts..
There is a problem here.
It is a sticky situation..
getting off the soapbox...