April 02, 2008
Ted Turner Announces $200-Million Anti-Malaria Effort
By Caroline Preston
New York
The broadcasting tycoon Ted Turner announced yesterday a new partnership between his United Nations Foundation and two religious organizations to fight malaria in Africa.
The effort, organized by the U.N. Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lutheran World Relief, and the United Methodist Church, aims to raise $200-million to prevent deaths from the disease, which kills more than 1 million people each year.
“The battle against disease and poverty go hand in hand,” said Mr. Turner. “We can only do this by all of us pulling together. We need the educational community, the help of governments, philanthropy, and certainly the world’s great religions.”
Over the next several years, the churches will help educate their members, who number more than 20 million, about malaria and other diseases aggravated by poverty. The money they raise will go toward the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and to strengthen the churches’ ability to provide care to people in Africa.
Chad Amour, youth leader with Lutheran World Relief, said the partnership will help connect the tiny communities his organization works with in far-flung parts of Africa, with government officials, advocates, researchers, and other people working to stamp out malaria.
“You can reach very rural areas in the context of the church network, but there’s a disconnect between that and the global perspective,” he said. “This is giving those folks who are doing that work in the rural areas a seat at the global table helping to address malaria.”
‘Moment Is Right’
Since its founding 10 years ago, the U.N. Foundation has led a number of partnerships to help fight poverty, disease, and other issues tackled by the United Nations. Its Measles Initiative, which involved the American Red Cross, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization, has helped reduce deaths from measles in Africa by more than 90 percent.
The announcement came as many organizations are galvanizing around the battle against malaria. The Gates Foundation, which has poured $1.2-billion into fighting malaria since 2000, has publicly called for its eradication.
“The moment is right for this to be a successful campaign,” said Kathy Calvin, executive vice president of the U.N. Foundation. “The individuals involved will be part of a winning story, and everyone wants to be part of something that brings the next great success to the world.”
Goal Questioned
However, the Gates fund’s call for eradication has sparked some criticism. Arata Kochi, who directs the World Health Organization’s malaria program, has said eliminating malaria is unrealistic and fuels false hopes among African governments.
For his part, Mr. Turner stressed the simplicity of solutions to the disease.
“We may not be able to eradicate it completely, but we certainly can practically eliminate it,” he said. “It’s hard for anyone, a good soul, not to be in favor of a program that, for $10, can save a child’s life.”
At a press conference to announce the partnership, Mr. Turner was asked why he was working with religious charities, given his past criticism of religion.
“I’ve been in and out,” he said. “As I get older, I get more tolerant.”
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Our organization ships computer labs to about 24 schools a year in Uganda. We’d love to help spread the information about preventing Malaria. Is there any “packaged” infomation we could load on our PCs for these communities to use? computers4africa.org
— Ruth Leacock Apr 3, 11:35 AM #
This response to a Time Magazine article seems relevant. There ARE practical, affordable, politically viable, and voluntary ways to manage world population. Step One: Admit it is a problem.
Richard
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For many it had to be disappointing that you did not include discussion of the single greatest human cause of environmental damage nor any practical programs for mitigating that cause, in your “10 Ideas That Are Changing The World” list. Are we as a species in denial? I would like to see a whole story on this issue alone, but will understand if you choose not to… My anecdotal studies suggest no one would buy your magazine to read it. Talk about, “An Inconvenient Truth”! No one wants to hear about this one, or even let it stray into their mind for long. The “many” being disappointed were surely the non-humans on the planet. For an estimated 27,000 plant and animal species a year, there comes a moment when only one of them is left alive and struggling with all they have to keep their species going…only to fail.
The resources their species’ needed are no longer available. Land use changes, loss of habitat, hunting, pollution, etc. have wiped them off the Earth forever. This extinction rate is estimated at several thousand times the natural rate. What is driving it? Humans. One of your ideas claims that the planet has a carrying capacity of some 8 billion and we will stabilize at it, but how can that be when species are being wiped out like this? How many years can we lose 27,000 species before those pesky chickens come home to roost? Seems like if we take our cue from Nature herself, we can find our true carrying capacity by when extinction is occurring at the natural rate.
Global human population management is the mother of all inconvenient truths. We have a niche in the biosphere to fill and we do not decide its size, Nature herself does. We can willfully manage our own population or Nature will do it for us with environmental collapse (global warming merely being one of many on the list), poverty and famine, disease, and war. It’s not how big our carbon footprint is, but rather the consumption and waste footprint and HOW MANY OF US are making footprints.
There are three ways to manage it. Voluntary measures exist and they can turn the environmental direction around 180 degrees in ONE DECADE! Wow, get a reporter on this. (But be warned, no one will want to read the article, not even Al Gore.) Non-voluntary but democratic governmental ways exist such as the removal of tax incentives for having children, and the creation of tax-disincentives. And of course there is education. People need to learn early on the basics of ecology and carrying capacity, interdepence, respect for all life, consumption and waste footprint (forget carbon footprint), living within the means of the given ecosystem, NON-EXPLOITIVE low-consumption/high-tech lifestyles and societies, etc.
There’s an impoverished and extremely non-popular website that represents at least one voluntary approach. The idea is simple: The global and self-identifying “Haves” voluntarily sacrifice some of their money, goods, and services. The global and self-identifying “Have-nots” voluntarily sacrifice some of their fertility. There is a global redistribution of wealth and globally human population levels move down into their carrying capacity through natural attrition. The website has an online interactive spreadsheet that details the program cost and some basic program variables. Dramatic global affects can be theoretically seen with ten countries funding $150B/year for ten years. Affordable when compared to the Iraq war. Part of the novelty of this approach is that not only is free birth control provided, but also incentive payments to participants and their communities. Keep in mind that for some 60% of the world, the annual income is less than $1,500 USD. For example, as seen in the spreadsheet, a village of 1,000 could realize program benefits of $600,000 to $800,000+ in cash, goods, and services: food, agriculture, medicine, clean water, transportation, communication, housing, education, generators, tools, clothing, neonatal care, etc. They exchange hope for the future (their fertility) for Hope Now. (See website: www.prvllc.org.)
Both sides of the global human equation sacrificing, united together for fixing that part of the world’s problems which we are empowered to fix. Caring for each other by sacrificing our greed, selfishness, and self-importance in recognition that if we choose not to we have no future and will take a lot more of other amazing species with us. Coming to our senses and accepting our place in Nature. What would Jesus do? Exactly that. Maybe he gave us the answer to a pop-quiz that was to come 2,000 years later: self-sacrifice.
Regards,
Richard Warner
rwarner@prv.com
— Richard Warner Apr 12, 03:56 PM #