Friday, January 18, 2008

Gerson, AIDS & Doing Well by Doing Good   [Iain Murray]

Andrew,

I'm not even certain that the millions of dollars we pour into fighting AIDS in Africa really does well all things considered. As you know, people respond to incentives. In Africa, they may have responded too well. My colleague Hans Bader reminds us:

I am not an expert on this, but my understanding is that the huge amounts of money lavished on AIDS in Africa have distorted some countries’ primary health care systems, resulting in a brain drain from primary care into AIDS treatment. Doctors who once saved lives through simple treatments now work in prestigious, Western-funded AIDS treatment programs that save far fewer lives per dollar. (In poor African countries like Lesotho, “H.I.V.-infected children are offered exemplary treatment, while children suffering from much simpler-to-treat diseases are left untreated, sometimes to die,” notes an AIDS researcher). And massive AIDS subsidies in Botswana have not prevented its AIDS rates from remaining stubbornly high, even as AIDS rates have begun to fall in neighboring Zimbabwe, where men are becoming too poor to afford multiple mistresses and thus are less likely to contract AIDS.

As David brilliantly notes below, the real solution to the problems of Africa is wealth and the economic growth that provides it. We could do far better by liberalizing trade, bashing down iniquities like the EU's morally repugnant Common Agricultural Program and by encouraging real property rights (which provide capital) in Africa than by any number of well-meaning programs that provide perverse incentives.

Ah, where's Michael Oakeshott when you need him?

01/18 03:31 PMShare