[afro-nets] Roy Innis on malaria (17)

["George Kent" <kent@hawaii.edu>]

Roy Innis on malaria (17)
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Jeff attributes the inadequate attention given to malaria mainly to corrupt, arrogant, and top-down oriented institutions. That description of the institutions may be accurate, but I think the more  fundamental explanation for the inattention is that the global  community really does not care enough.

I have been working on a comparable problem, the problem of  widespread malnutrition in the world. Poverty is hardly an adequate  explanation for such widespread and persistent malnutrition.  After  all, the world as a whole is not poor. Fundamentally, malnutrition  exists and persists because of powerlessness and indifference. There  are three key points:

Disjunction. Hunger and other major forms of malnutrition persist  largely because the people who have the power to solve the problem  are not the ones who have the problem.

Material interests. The powerful serve mainly the powerful, not the  powerless, because the powerless cannot do much for the benefit of  the powerful.

Compassion. On the whole, the people who have the power do not have much compassion for the powerless.

Wouldn't this apply to malaria as well?

I have been looking at past global summits and declarations on malnutrition. They try to suggest that the global community is doing something about the problem, but when you look more closely you see that they always push the responsibility back to the separate nations. The world as a whole does not take responsibility. I have essayed on this at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/THE%20MISSING%20GLOBAL%20STRATEGY.doc

I suspect that the same point could be made with regard to malaria: the world as a whole has never really taken it seriously. Am I right? Is there a serious GLOBAL plan for dealing with it?

Aloha, George
mailto:kent@hawaii.edu