Africa? Can you be more precise?
From the Telegraph (via many people on Twitter)
Seeing this at the same time as hearing about Bob Geldof’s Band-Aid reboot really emphasises the point that Africa isn’t a single place. The first Band-Aid recording was intended to help people in Ethiopia; the new one is for the Ebola-stricken regions of West Africa. The distance from Freetown to Addis Ababa is about the same as Auckland to Dili in East Timor, or Los Angeles to Bogota (or Addis Ababa to Prague).
On the other hand, the graph does make an important point. Syphilis, starvation, and TB are all very inexpensively treatable. Malaria and HIV are largely preventable, also at low cost. An effective treatment for Ebola will help, especially for medical personnel who are otherwise at very high risk, but in the long run it isn’t going to be enough. If we can’t deliver penicillin effectively, we won’t be able to deliver Ebola drugs. To make a real difference, we need a vaccine that’s good enough to prevent outbreaks.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »