An added advantage is that if there is an outbreak of disease X, then we can simply add preventative/curative item Y to the things being taken to the people. I think this is a very important point and deserves much more consideration from the NGO community. I too am astounded by the lack of such co-ordination. So, while the non-profits are not free from responsibility, we should not forget the role donors play in creating the situation.Įlie: Great post. We saw this dynamic most graphically displayed during Katrina and the tsunami where there was far more money than needed available and far too little actually getting done. So, they simplify to what they can handle - one thing at a time. Non-profits are actively disincented from acquiring logistics competence (because that’s overhead of course). The studies are pretty clear that for the average person, the more information and more choices you give them, the less likely (and less amount) they are to give.Īn appeal focused on helping 1 child in 1 way raises more money than helping multiple children or helping in multiple ways.Ī second factor is that the difficulty of managing logistics increases at least geometrically, if not logarithmically, as you add more items. Unfortunately this logic works very well until you get to the part of our brains that actually controls giving. But, if you’re running a distribution program as many organizations do … how can you distribute bed-nets but not ORS? How can you distribute Vitamin A without bringing some bed-nets along? And, why distribute condoms without some good ol’ Ivermectin? Posted in Uncategorized | | 19 Comments There are certainly a lot of good reasons to run a program focused on providing everything – necessary medicine in addition to health and other poverty-reducing servies – for a contained group of people. Why isn’t someone distributing everything? It’s great that Nothing but Nets and GNNTDC recognized the opportunity in some cases, but why haven’t we seen anyone giving out the whole goodie bag? It makes no sense that it takes more than three different organizations to distribute all the small, cheap items mentioned above. And, for the most part, all these conditions affect the same communities: poor, rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. And, that’s not all: condoms cost pennies and prevent HIV/AIDS transmission, a 50-cent dose of antibiotics cures pneumonia, iron pills reduce incidence of anemia, and Vitamin A pills prevent blindness. Last year, when I first did research into diarrhea, I learned about something called Oral Rehydration Salts, a packet of which cures diarrhea and costs 5 cents. More efficiency means lower costs and ultimately more lives saved.īut, here’s the thing that bugs me. The Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control proposes something similar: organize the handful of organizations distributing medicine to fight the so-called neglected tropical diseases, which include River Blindness, Hookworm, and Elephantiasis. Why not utilize the existing infrastructure to reduce the cost that a bed-net-alone charity would incur, and distribute more nets for fewer dollars? Saving people from malaria and measles – what could be better? Nothing but Nets had a simple idea: kids in Africa need bed-nets to protect them from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and there’s already a huge distribution network in place, through the Measles Initiative.
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