Beware of band-aids
I came across this picture recently:
The implication here is that if only we could provide safe drinking water to everyone then 8 million fewer people would die each year. However I think this is not correct. The type of people who do not have access to safe water typically also face many other dangers in their lives, such as bad food, communicable diseases, violence, etc. Having safe water to drink does not take away all these other bad things, and while it may reduce the risk of death somewhat, I suspect that a significant fraction of the 8 million who died from bad water would still die from some of these other causes in a short period of time.
The lesson is that the real issue is poverty, and thinking that a lot of good can be done with quick band-aid solutions like providing clean water is misleading and dangerous. While providing clean water will obviously do some good, a lot more good could probably be done with a more broad approach.
4 Comments
The math.. is wrong…
It should read:
(Titanic + Twin Towers)x2000=water
Let’s say that your “significant fraction” is 50%. Then cleaning up water still saves 4 million lives, if not 8 million. You got “a more broad approach” which does better than that?
Felix: Ouch, you’re right. I’m a theory guy .. guess I need some data to back up my crazy ideas.
“I suspect that a significant fraction of the 8 million who died from bad water would still die from some of these other causes in a short period of time.”
Of course, there’s the other side of the coin - people who don’t die from the water (so aren’t counted in the statistic) but still develop a serious illness - they would be helped here as well.