Dying Under the Radar

So what's to be done? Who else besides the IRC is doing particularly valuable work at the moment?
The usual suspects--Catholic Relief Services, World Vision. Doctors Without Borders, of course. There's also always value in advocating with members of Congress, saying, "Let's maintain U.S. government support for the peacekeeping efforts and continue to finance U.N. peacekeepers." Congo also has the lowest expenditure of heath services per capita: $15 per person, per year.

What should the next target above that level be?
To provide for what we would call a "basic package" would cost $32 a year. For Congo, that would mean an additional $1.02 billion dollars.

What about the suspicion that aid money just disappears into the pockets of unscrupulous leaders?
That's an important question, and one that the aid community has been dealing with in recent years. The whole world has professionalized. In the past it was a bigger problem. But it's important to remember that the aid doesn't simply go to the government in a lot of cases. It's not like we write a check to the provincial minister of health. We pay salaries, buy drugs, conduct rehabilitation of health facilities. The problem hasn't gone away completely, and never will. But there are more checks and balances now.

One of the biggest challenges for such monitoring is the huge reduction in that part of the government. Years ago, there were 14,000 people working in the State Department. Now it's just 6,000. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been talking about this very issue, as a security issue, in that the development of our humanitarian aid is an undervalued part of our foreign policy. It just really is. It's harder to police corruption when you don't have the appropriate workforce. So, just listen to the secretary on that issue. But still, things are much better regarding corruption--a sea change from 10 years ago.

But overall, our mission is to remind people what makes us human. What does it say about us if we're, at best, simply ignorant--or worse, willfully ignorant--of the deaths of 5.4 million people? Also, the fact is that the burden of this crisis is on children, who account for 50 percent of the deaths, and only 19 percent of the population. And most are dying from infectious diseases that people rarely die of in the West.

CORRECTION: (Added on Jan. 25) This story originally said there were 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo. The actual number is 60,000.

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