What would have happened if the US waged a war on malaria instead of on Iraq?

During Andy Sherman's two-year Peace Corps service in Thioke Thian, Senegal, 9-year-old Salimatou helped him navigate village life and learn the language, telling him words in Pulaar as he'd point at objects. But after returning from a stint working in another village, Sherman learned the girl had died of malaria. And after completing his service in 2002, he learned two women who had been like mothers to him also died of the mosquito-borne disease.

Their deaths, and the deaths of more than 1 million people each year from malaria, prompted Sherman and fellow Saint Louis University medical student Jesse Matthews to start NetLife, a nonprofit organization that distributes mosquito nets in Africa. It's motto: Saving lives one net at a time.

"Previously when we bought them, they were $8.50 a net. That's way more than a typical villager in Senegal could afford," said Sherman, 29. The group, which now buys nets for $5 each, distributes them for free in remote villages where people don't have them.

The concept sounds almost too straightforward. But the docs-in-training say the nets work, and health agencies agree.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_he_me/netting_malaria

A world with no war, fighting disease, poverty and hunger. I hope I live long enough.

year would do a lot.

But, we let the NGOs and Bill Gates do the work, and places like little Denmark outspend us (per cvapita and per GDP) on aid.

Nothing new here. During the Johnson years I had a button: "The Great Society-- Bombs, Bullets, Bullshit."

Judging by Bush's propensity to screw up, if he had declared "War on Malaria" (GWOM?) malaria would be running rampant all over the world, mosquitoes would be setting off the human equivalent of bug-bombs, and your average Amerikan would plaster their vehicles with magnetic ribbons (blood red, of course).

Dysentery kills a lot of people and its easy to cure. You could spend a tenth of what we spent on Iraq on that and save a lot of lives, even more than if we spent it on malaria.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

The cost of Congressional appropriations for the Iraq war has been $369 billion or so. There are 786 million people in the world who are hungry. Do the math. We could have spent $469 apiece for food. That is for the whole friggin world.

Stamp out world hunger or invade and occupy Iraq....which approach would help us eliminate terrorism more effectively?

Do you think the terrorists just might have a harder sell to paint America as evil if we stamped out world hunger instead of waging foolish wars?

. . . poised to be one of the great medical plagues of all time.