Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
The New Republic's lead editorial (free registration required) blasts the now-moribund Immigration Reform Act for including a provision to admit hundreds of thousands of temporary workers each year. It bitterly condemns America's "unsavory tradition" of "importing non-Europeans to do the difficult tasks that our own citizens shun" as part of a "shadowy underclass".
Last month, I reported on the first public release of China's Export-Import Bank's environmental policy and suggested that China's overtures of increased transparency might present an opportunity for other donors to engage China in a more cooperative partnership. It seems the International Financial Corp. (IFC), the World Bank branch for private sector lending, is doing just that.
This time it is different. The G-8's statement on African development is focused largely on an often-neglected area--the private sector.
Previous G-8 statements have focused mostly on aid to Africa and have immediately generated a large volume of commentary on whether or not funding levels from rich countries are adequate, reflect prior commitments, etc.
Last week's Onion analyzed the breakdown of President Bush's request to double PEPFAR funding to $30 billion:
Yesterday the New York Times profiled Lant Pritchett and sketched his proposal to create 16 million guest-worker jobs in rich countries for people from poor countries. His goal is to help people from very poor places make their lives better.
Victoria Hale, head of OneWorld Health, an innovative non-profit pharmaceutical firm, reckons that compulsory licensing could prove "the last blow" that pushes the drug industry away from looking for cures for diseases of the poor world, which are already woefully neglected...
Bruce Lehman, a lawyer who worked on the TRIPS [sic] accord in the Clinton administration, thinks it is cynical for middle-income countries "to avoid paying their fair share of drug-discovery costs."
Bill Gates finally got a Harvard degree yesterday, about 30 years after he dropped out to go fritter away his time playing with computer code. He also got the chance to exhort this year's graduates to work toward the greater good, applying their education and talents to solving some of the toughest social and economic problems in the world.
Americans are broadly supportive of the efforts to reduce the tragic toll of AIDS, in part because they know that many children are affected by the disease and children's health has always been one of the highest priorities voiced in public opinion polls. But the truth is that most children who die in the developing world aren't dying from AIDS. They are dying from the same preventable killers as have stalked them in the past such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria.
Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) for malaria are the textbook case of demand forecasting gone wrong, in part because of wildly optimistic assumptions about uptake in developing countries.
The 34th Annual International Conference on Global Health that ended last Friday was inspiring on many fronts. Here are a few highlights:
In her acceptance of the Jonathan Mann Award, Dr. Bogaletc Gebre spoke without notes for 15 minutes - her voice cracking but her eyes dry - of how "the subjugation of African women from cradle to grave" can be ended with women's health empowerment, drawing on her experience working to end female genital cutting.
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