Citizens versus Extreme Poverty
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Twenty years ago, a grass-roots movement led by Rotary International, a
voluntary organization with around 1.2 million members in more than 200
countries, decided to attack. As of the mid-1980s, there were more than
300,000 cases of polio per year worldwide, despite the diseases virtual
elimination in the richest countries, where vaccination was routine. Rotary
took on the challenge of getting vaccines to the poor, in regions with weak or
non-existent public health systems. Rotarians dreamed not only of reducing the
number of polio cases, but of eradicating the disease entirely. This goal is
now within reach.
Rather than wait for politicians to take up the fight against polio,
Rotarians led the way. A few years later, the World Health Organization, and
then other international agencies and donor countries, joined the cause,
creating a coalition of official and private organizations that now support
Rotarys vision. By 2006, the number of polio cases had been cut dramatically,
to well under 3,000 cases per year.
Complete eradication is in reach, but is still proving elusive, as small
outbreaks have plagued one country or another in recent years. In some cases,
such as Northern Nigeria, social resistance to the vaccine has blocked adequate
coverage of the population. Pockets of polio transmission also persist in
India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In a few other countries, the disease has
been sporadically reintroduced by travelers from regions where polio has not
yet been eliminated. And, in rare cases, the vaccine itself has failed and led
to infection.
Still, despite the difficulties of rooting out the very last cases, the
progress made against polio has been historic. More importantly, Rotarys
leadership on polio offers a more general lesson in the fight against extreme
poverty, hunger, and disease. Even when politicians dont lead, it is still
possible for committed individuals and voluntary organizations to change the
world. The key is to link a bold idea with a practical and powerful technology,
and then to push the idea and technology forward through mass citizen action.
These same lessons can be applied to the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), the targets for fighting poverty, disease, and hunger that the worlds
governments adopted in 2000. The MDGs are bold but achievable. For example,
they call for reducing by 2015 the proportion of the worlds population that
was chronically under-nourished in 1990, and for cutting the child mortality
rate by three quarters. The MDGs also address the scourges of maternal death
in childbirth, lack of access to safe drinking water, and killer diseases such
as malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS.
Just as with polio, the fight against hunger, disease, and lack of access to
safe water and sanitation can be carried forward with practical and powerful
technologies. Indeed, these technologies are so powerful that they can enable
families currently trapped in poverty to escape it once and for all.
Consider hunger in Africa. Most of Africas farmers, working tiny plots, do
not produce enough food to feed their families, much less to earn an income.
The root of the problem is that Africas farmers are too poor to obtain the
basic modern inputsincluding high-yield seed varieties, fertilizers, and
small-scale water management systemsthat could enable them to double or triple
their output of food and cash crops.
The solution is therefore not much more complicated than a polio vaccine. If
organizations like Rotary International can help African farmers to get a 50
kilogram bag of appropriate fertilizer and a 10 kilogram tin of improved seeds,
the rise in farm output could be enough to relieve extreme hunger and help farm
households begin to earn some income.
Such practical approaches can solve many of the key problems of extreme
poverty. Consider, similarly, the death and illness caused by malaria, which
can be reduced very sharply through the use of mosquito nets for beds and
anti-malaria medicines. An anti-malaria bed net costs just $5, lasts five
years, and can accommodate two children. Thus, for just $0.50 per year, each
child can be protected by a bed net. And a $1 medical treatment can cure
malaria if the child gets infected despite the bed net. Yet bed nets and
anti-malaria medicines do not reach the people who need them, because the
people who need them are too poor.
Fortunately, the American Red Cross and other organizations have been
following the Rotary model, using private donations and private volunteers to
fill the gap left by our political leaders. Red Cross chapters across Africa,
in partnership with other organizations, are now distributing bed nets free of
charge to impoverished families, in the same way that Rotary has been
distributing polio vaccines.
The time has arrived for a massive effort by voluntary organizations to take
up the MDGs through private action. We need not wait for the politicians. In a
short period of time, the worlds citizens can make deep inroads in the fight
against disease, hunger, and poverty. Then the politicians will follow.
The key is practicality, boldness, and, most importantly, a commitment by
those who are better off to volunteer their time and money to bring practical
helpin the form of high-yield seeds, fertilizers, medicines, bed nets,
drinking wells, and materials to build school rooms and clinicsto the worlds
poorest people.
** Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs112
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