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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)
In article <32aa8c6a.977042415@nntp.st.usm.edu>,
brshears@whale.st.usm.edu (Harold Brashears) wrote:
>joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) wrote for all to see:
>
>[edited]
>
>>Up to half a billion (500,000,000) people in Africa suffer at least one
>>serious malarial episode each year. In 1993 it was estimated by the
World
>>Bank that within two years, due to loss of productive adult workers,
>>malaria cost African economies 1.8 billion dollars. Mortality due to
>>malaria in Africa was at an all time high in 1993 (The Economist, August
>>21, 1993: 33-34, nad the American Association for the Advancement of
>>Science (1991))
>
>If you are in truth a graduate student in a scientific discipline, you
>appear to be remarkably careless with your numbers. Dividing 500
>million cases with 1.8 billion dollars gives a cost per case of $3.60.
>A remarkably low number for so serious a disease.
>
>Also, your 500 million in Africa alnoe seems a little high. Since the
>African population in 1991 was 817 million, you are contending that
>61% of the African population has malaria. This may be the case
>though, I do not know.
>
>[deleted]
>
>Regards, Harold
>----
Joan is completely correct. African pay is so low that even a
month's income lost is less than what you carry around in your pocket on a
weekend. When I was in Kenya doing the toughest job I'll ever love in the
late eighties, resistent strains of malaria were moving into the highlands.
I lost four students to malaria -- our school was at 6,000 feet,
supposedly above the problem (and four to traffic accidents, another
scourge). The per capita income for Kenya at the time was ~$300. Further,
I'm sure the World Bank dramatically understates the case -- I doubt they
factored in work lost by farmers at home or nomads who are not in the cash
economy in any great way. BTW, Nilotes, Dave, are not immune to malaria.
Plenty of them get it, and die (there are biologically no such thing as
Nilotes anyway, since intermarriage is so common) Africans are to some
extent adapted to it, but I never heard of anyone who was "immune" to it.
61% of Africans having malaria seems like a pretty acceptable
figure to me. Everyone gets it sooner or later (I had it twice; had
malaria and rabies at the same time!) and I find it hard to believe that
there is anyone living in malarial zones who does not have it at one time
or another. BTW, the year I left Peace Corps they had started a malaria
vaccine testing program among the peoples around Lake Victoria (Nilotes
all!) in Kenya, but I never heard what became of that.
Mike T
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