Slashdot Mirror
What Africa Really Needs To Fight Ebola
Lasrick writes Laura Kahn, a physician on the research staff of Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, writes that the high tech solutions being promoted to help fight Ebola in Africa will make no difference. What Africa really needs is anti-corruption efforts, now. "A case in point is Liberia, which has received billions of dollars in international aid for over a decade, with little to show for it. The country ranks near the bottom of the United Nation's Human Development Index and near the bottom of Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer. And while international aid groups and non-governmental organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Medical Corps provide important humanitarian assistance and medical care, they also inadvertently absolve African political leaders from developing medical and public health infrastructures."
Right. It has always been a tradition for the top tribal leader to line his and his family's pockets.
Anti-corruption efforts are certainly important, especially in improving the economic conditions in a country. But focusing too strongly on just a single issue makes the problem seem unsolvable.
It is not.
World metrics have been improving steadily, some countries and regions faster than others, but systemic improvements have been dramatic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpX4l2UeZg
Suppose someone there tries to start a medical supply business.
Then along comes a foreign government dumping billions in supplies there and wipes them out.
There are times when foreign aid is required. However, when it becomes the norm,
then it's impossible to build any sort of infrastructure.
I will debate any statist on any argument whatsoever...
And yet, you posted anonymously, thus destroying your own credibility.
The developed world has norms, rules, traditions, institutions, stuff like that to control corruption. Many African and Middle Eastern countries lack these. And that includes know-how on how to control corruption.
Methods to increase transparency and control corruption are very well known. Singapore and Hong Kong started out dirt-poor with no resources and no money, but their leaders were wise enough to put the right systems into place from the outset. Hong Kong's ICAC are world-class at preventing and dealing with corruption, and a lot of backwards countries could do well to learn from them. Lee Kwan Yew IMHO is a legend.
The trouble is, most leaders in most countries will steal anything not nailed down (as I've seen in Spain myself); it's human nature to seek out power and then start stealing everything, especially in "low trust" societies with Third World mindsets ("me!! now!! i'm entitled!!"). When the corruption gets so bad that the interests of the kleptocratic elite interlock, then improvement becomes impossible.
That's not to say that reform isn't impossible (and the few cases where highly corrupt places got cleaned up, there were external centres of power that could challenge the corrupt leaders and get them removed); just highly unlikely.
Because I speak the truth about statism and because my arguments cannot be defeated, whenever I create accounts on Slashdot I am quickly modded down and/or account revoked.
Er, that'd be because of the constant offtopic posting, fuckwit.
Some see it as a natural thing, that's really sad because now they won't oppose it.
Others see it as the result of colonialism but we're 20-50 years on and things only got worse...
Talking about Ebola, two months ago I arrived in Angola and they had temperature screening for those getting off the plane. :(.
Rather sad was this was only done for foreigners, those with an Angolan passport are apparently immune
Africa is rife with corruption and corruption breeds what we'd otherwise see as stupidity but for individuals it's really just a way of survival.
The only effective way to fight corruption is to have a solid legal system and from European experience we learn that needs to be in place for several generations before it becomes effective.
Since the British occupation of South Africa it had a reasonable judiciary but now Zuma's ANC has taken over it is left to die, laws are watered down and officials installed based on their race and political affiliation.
It is a sad conclusion but even in the best scenario Africa will be corrupt for at least the next century.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
There is corruption of one sort or another everywhere. Most 'functional' countries manage to keep it down to a level where the rest of society functions to some level. In the US, people are routinely tossed into courts over bribery and corruption issues. The Navy is running a big anticorruption scandal at the moment. Of course, some (or perhaps most) of the perpetrators get away - but enough get caught to keep the system functioning.
In a number of African and Middle Eastern countries and likely including Russia at this point, the rule of law is so feeble an distant that overt corruption, nepotism and just outright theft are the rules of the game.
Don't knock the judicial system too hard. It serves as a strong barrier to this sort of thing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What Africa really needs to fight Ebola is to stop traditional burial practices, such as allowing traditional healers to wash the dead body and then travel back to their home village and spread the contagion. Where there is one case, quarantine the village and cremate the deceased. To quote: "Ebola victims are most infectious right after death—which means that West African burial practices, where families touch the bodies, are spreading the disease like wildfire." In Guinea, 60% of all cases had been linked to traditional burial practices."
Liberia has a 42% literacy rate, no jobs and extreme poverty. So can corruption really be fought in these conditions? I'm just thinking education is bigger priority.
"The problem the press is occupied with today will never be cured if my problem [fair economics] isn't resolved" is the takeaway.
I'm a bit perplexed by the Summary. Certainly the problem (corruption) is indeed really messing with African fair economies, and certainly economic growth supports hospitals and health care, etc. Correlation, check.
But Ebola outbreaks have happened before, it usually subsides, and - not to minimize how horrible an urban outbreak would be - the western press's obsession with 8,483 deaths in 12 months is what it is. Trying to attract the press attention to YOUR cause by "baiting the hook with today's headline" is an old trick. Will Ebola ever be cured if Global Warming / Boka Haram / Pollution / US Agricultural Subsidies / [Insert something} continues? Discuss!
The rest of the article is fine. But I trade with Africa and China and Latin America, and can tell you... recovery from corruption can be amazingly fast when the corruption's stopped. What Deng Tsao Ping demonstrated in Guandong Province is that if Government interference stops, just for a few years, economies erupt like fireworks. Whatever flus or colds or dysentary epidemics were going on in Guangdong were replaced by pollution, and that's part of development.
Gently reply
"that's too bad but we have our own corrupt politicians here"
True, but your scale is off by 100x.
How much extra did you have to pay the last time you renewed your driver's license? The last time you took a bus? How much kickback do you pay your boss every week to keep your job? When a loved one is in the hospital, how much does the nurse demand directly from you to make sure they get fed?
Be real here.
Tom Geller
How much extra did you have to pay the last time you renewed your driver's license? The last time you took a bus? How much kickback do you pay your boss every week to keep your job? When a loved one is in the hospital, how much does the nurse demand directly from you to make sure they get fed?
The last time I bought health insurance, I paid about twice as much as the same insurance would cost in Canada or the UK.
That's because when we have "health care reform," like (most recently) Obamacare, the "stakeholders," who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaign contributions of both candidates, figuratively sat down at a table in a smoke-filled room and worked out a system that would give each of them a piece of the action, each of which brought up the cost.
So the insurance industry, through their lobby America's Health Insurance Plans, got the franchise for selling health insurance, for which they got about 30% of our health care dollar, compared to Canada. The drug industry, through their lobby Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), escaped price controls for Medicare and Medicaid, and are now able to charge $100,000 and even $300,000 for a drug that you need to stay alive for a year. The doctors, through their professional associations, got rates that give $300,000 a year incomes to specialists (but not general practitioners, whose incomes are close to UK levels). The hospitals got to charge patients rates based on Chargemaster, and to give their CEOs salaries that are often hundreds of millions.
I think campaign contributions in exchange for these handouts are corruption, and I can't understand how they're significantly different from, say, a Nigerian government official demanding 5% of the dollar value to approve a government contract to build a hospital.
Absolutely agree! There is *no* excuse for the poor medical infrastructure conditions in Africa - none. Boatloads of money have been sent to Africa: too much of it has lined the pockets of corrupt politicians, businessmen, and others It's disgraceful, and *we* are part of the problem because we don't insist on results and accountability.
Are you saying Africa is a prison? Are you saying that Africans are more likely to be criminals? Do you realize how that sounds?
Sure, it sounds to me like I'm dealing with an idiot. If a place is such a nirvana that you have to force people to stay, then that place happens to have the primary characteristic of a prison.
It's nice to see that we haven't lost our ability to be condescending without wasting effort on getting informed. Let me suggest some other headers along the same, stupid lines:
"What America really needs to curb gun-related crime" ...
"What Europe really needs to save the economy"
Well, you get the gist, I'm sure. We all have hard-to-solve problems, and none of us welcomes this sort of non-advice that sounds like 'why don't they just get their act together'. Why don't the Americans and Europeans 'just get their act together'? Probably because the problems are more complex than 'just something ...', and part of that complexity is that we in the West are tying well-meaning aid to greedy businesses who have no intention of giving these countries a fair deal. Why would a Western company actually help set up competition against themselves in an African country? Companies are businesses, not idealists.
You are talking about the low level corruption, that certainly isn't very common in the more developed countries (except for southern Europe, obviously). The high level corruption thrives everywhere, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
you blindly and sheepishly support a failed system that across history and across nations and peoples has resulted in nothing but poverty, hunger, death and destruction, oh and also made a small number of people quite rich and powerful, but not me and not YOU of course!
You are a moron. I have a single word for you: Norway.
it has utterly failed to control HIV and has one of the highest AIDS rates in Africa.
Because level of corruption and/or education are the only factors in HIV spread. There have been dumber, more corrupt societies in the past which haven't had a problem with HIV infections because there was no HIV to spread.