Kenya - some sensible changes and happy news

Quoting from The Week:

"A mass giveaway of free mosquito nets has almost halved child deaths from malaria in high-risk areas of Kenya. Since 2003, then Kenyan ministry of health has handed out 12.5 million insecticide-treated nets, increasing the proportion of children sleeping under protection from 5% to 52%. The scale of the progamme is unprecedented in Africa, and early results suggest it has been an astonishing success. Childhood mortality in some areas has fallen by 44%, with hospital admissions down by up to 57%."

No Western-controlled pharmaceuticals, no highly controversial and banned (but truly effective) DDT, just a simple solution. And not even that costly! If each net costs around $5US to make, that's around 65 million bucks. A lot. But that huge total is nothing compared to the $1.5 billion in INTEREST paid to service debts owed by Kenya to the IMF etc. And even less compared to the $650 billion the USA spent on its military this year.

Sometimes things really need to be put in perspective. The USA could pay for mosquito nets for every child in high-risk malarial areas in the whole freaking world a thousand times over and still have enough money left over to blow up the whole world.