I'm just beginning to delve into this book by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. An economist who originally hails from Michigan, Sachs has detailed step-by-step how to tackle extreme world poverty in our time. The year 2025, to be precise.
Most impressive is the complete understanding of the world's issues as they pertain to poverty as detailed here:
Health
* Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
* More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.
* Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.
* Every 30 seconds an African child dies of malaria-more than one million child deaths a year.
* Each year, approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result.
* TB is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 percent of people with HIV also have TB.
[Cont'd]
Water
* More than 2.6 billion people-over 40 per cent of the world's population-do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
* Four out of every ten people in the world don't have access even to a simple latrine.
* Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.
Agriculture:
* In 1960, Africa was a net exporter of food; today the continent imports one-third of its grain.
* More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-today basis.
* Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically.
* For the African farmer, conventional fertilizers cost two to six times more than the world market price.
The devastating effect of poverty on women:
* Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women.
* More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education.
* If a girl is educated for six years or more, as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates, will dramatically and consistently improve.
* Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.
* AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.
* The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education.
* A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America.
* Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day-an estimated 529,000 each year-from pregnancy-related causes.
* Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.
The understanding of the most pressing issues involved with extreme poverty, along with the ideas expressed for physically, and monetarily tackling these issues is proving this to be a fascinating, and compelling read. Something I truly hope that all our world leaders will have a copy of on hand, and read with an open mind. I recommend it to anyone concerned with world famine, disease, poverty, and helping the people in these nations become self-sufficient.
-Desi
http://greatscat.blogspot.com/