September 2012

Sometimes the world goes forward in very small steps. Here are some examples: A Hippos Water Roller, a drum that can be rolled on the ground making it easier for those with no faucets or running water to carry large amounts of water faster and over longer distances; An icow app that is used on mobile phones in remote areas to improve dairy farming and increase milk production; FMNR, farmer’s managed natural regeneration, which can restore existing trees on drought stricken areas, tried mainly in Senegal; Portable Water Pumps that help small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa grow crops out of season; A computer tablet that can diagnose heart disease in rural areas with limited access to medical services; Ethanol cooking oil plants, or how to locally refine cassava into ethanol to provide cleaner cooking fuel; Refugees United, a way for refugees to find their lost families and trace missing relatives; Sickle Cell Disease Research showing that large scale genomic studies are possible in Africa; M-PePea, a way to offer emergency credit through mobile phone for people who have no access to credit cards or bank loans; The Tutu Van combating the stigma of tuberculosis and HIV, a mobile clinic that offers screening; Orange Sweet Potatoes, a sweet potato containing beta-carotenes to help fight childhood blindness; Speaking Books, audio books to get life saving messages to millions of isolated people suffering from depression and mental health problems; Narrative Exposure Therapy for Uganda’s former child soldiers, encouraging storytelling to help them come to terms with their experiences. These projects, mainly funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, may be too small to make the news, but together, along with many similar ones, do sketch a picture that the world and the human race are more than discord, violence and greed.

Swedish doctors have succeeded in transplanting a uterus from a mother to a daughter. The hope is to perfect the technique as one more way women who are infertile can be able to carry their own baby. The issue is said to have some relevance to eliminating the problems of surrogacy. It does however mean surgery for the donor and both surgery and a lifetime of anti rejection drugs for the recipient. And too it raises ethical questions the scientific community and the society are not prepared to answer. We live on a planet where population growth is a concern, since the projected population looks to be surpassing the planet’s resources. We may be saved by some as yet unforeseen technological advance, until then oughtn’t we to focus on birth control and going back to pushing zero population growth? As exciting as uterus transplants may be for those who may want one, it does make me wonder whether focusing on how to perfect them isn’t a misplaced priority.

There’s been a plan in Indonesia since 2008 called Jamkesmas which has covered health care for over 76 million poor Indonesians. Last fall the Indonesia parliament enacted a law providing health care for 240 million citizens as of January 2014. Part of that law also provides a system of death benefits, pensions and worker’s comp insurance to be in place by mid 2015. In the Philippines 85% of the people have health coverage provided by a government program called PhilHealth. In China a rural health insurance plan now covers 97.5% of the people. Its National Audit Office declared recently that its social security system was what it called “basically” in place. India has a kind of basic health coverage for 110 million, maybe not much given the country’s population, but as an article in the Economist magazine pointed out, more than twice the number of uninsured Americans. India also expanded its job guarantee program to every rural district, promising 100 days of minimum work per year to any household requesting it. The list of countries which are enacting health care coverage and creating social safety nets keeps increasing. While it is still an open question whether these programs will create huge debts or substantially diminish dire poverty, it is also true that these countries are courageous in doing something which the United States, the great and mighty power, is still ambivalent on and currently stridently arguing about. It does give one pause for thought.