In a little less than a month from now I will be in Johannesburg, South Africa getting ready to start onsite work for our host organization, LoveLife, one of the largest AIDS prevention organizations in the country. Before I get too much into that, I better start at the beginning.
Prior to about this time last year I had never considered going to Africa. My impression of Africa at that point consisted of poverty, corruption, AIDS and other diseases, with elephants and giraffes mixed in for good measure. Then during 15.012 Applied Marco and International Economics at the end of the course the professors suggested that everyone should visit Africa to which my initial mental response was "Sorry friend, the closest I am getting to a Banana Republic is the mall." I just couldn't understand why one would want to go there, other than maybe for a safari. However, I couldn't push the idea out of my mind completely so I met with one of the professors to try to understand more about what they meant.
After the conversation I made my mind up that I was going to go to Africa. I started learning what I could about Africa and foreign aid and making sure to read the Africa and MIddle East section of the Economist. Over time I began to be able to track the situations in different countries and am proud to announce I can name four leaders of sub-saharan African countries (Kagame, Mugabe, Goodluck Jonathan, and Zuma.) The next step was to figure out how I was going to go to Africa. After looking into the options at Sloan it came down to the Global Health Delivery Lab or a Trek over Spring Break. I decided I wanted to take a more active role so I decided on the GHD lab.
I spent H2 of the Fall semester taking the Global Health Delivery course which was separate from the lab. The course gave a good overview of the challenges of delivering healthcare in resource constrained settings. One of the big things the course made clear is that there are issues beyond just the science that are hindering the delivery of healthcare in developing countries. The way I see the situation now there are thousands upon thousands of NGOs each trying to tackle a different challenge in a different region. It often left me wondering what would happen if Global Health was planned at a more global level.
Instead of all the NGOs, we create one large organization at a regional or country level and make cost/benefit decisions from that view. For example, if we had a health organization for sub-saharan Africa and a budget it would be easier to determine how to get the most bang for our buck. Save the lives that are easier and cheaper to save first than move up. Start with clean water and food, move to vaccinations, then on to preventative medicine and prenatal care and so on. I am not disagreeing that vision centers or ARVs don't have incredible benefits because they do, but if global health was planned at a more global level I am not sure that is where we would be investing our resources.
At any rate, the follow-on to the course was the Global Health Delivery Lab in the Spring. Going into winter break I had my team and host organization set, the next challenge was trying to define our project and get to work....
