"The African continent is littered with the wreckage of good intentions -

- international projects that started with pomp and hope and then died as foreigners lost interest. "

This morning I heard a radio piece (as always, on NPR), that began with a story very similar to one Alexis has written about the child in China. A woman in western Uganda had a c-section performed, but the hospital would not give her the sutures necessary to finish the operation until her husband paid for it. He bicycled home, borrowed a baby goat and sold it, but by the time he was back at the hospital, his wife had died. This happened because the hospital only had two sets of sutures left.

It is interesting that along with USAID, one of the people who did something about this situation in Uganda was George Halvorson, who is now the CEO of Kaiser. I was amazed to find how much he (and the program as a whole) has implemented the concepts we were discussing in our second session of class.

First, he believed that charity isn't the answer:

"The people who are being charitable give up, get tired, find a new charity, move on," says Halvorson. "When that happens, the programs die. There's a saying in one of the Ugandan languages... when the white faces leave, the care goes away. We think that's a bad model."

Second, the program hired someone in the community, a Ugandan woman, who worked with the Americans on the program. They worked with farmers in rural areas who already had farm co-ops in place (thus, not reinventing the wheel as we discussed).

This program, called the Uganda Health Cooperative, consists of health co-ops that decides what care they want to provide and collect their own money. Members pay a fee every four months. The total fees are said to be about $29 a year for a family of four.

I guess there are now 30 health co-ops in small towns, one that has even opened its own clinic.

The good things I noticed: The program empowers women, since health care is prepaid. It is sustainable. It is culturally appropriate.

Some problems: The co-ops do not provide treatement and care for HIV/AIDS. Also, the program is looking to find ways to apply this model to the city, which is difficult, as urban populations do not have dairy co-op systems in place.

All in all, this was pretty exciting!

The links:
The story I heard on NPR
The original story from 2002
George Halvorson even wrote a book!
And last, but not least, USAID