Morning Briefing

In a two-part series in his Slate blog "The Reckoning," author Michael Moran examines the "silo" effect of Western aid to improve health in Africa, writing in the first part, "Charities know that raising money for exotic disease eradication in the West is a good deal easier than, say, funding upgrades to substandard cardiac facilities. Yet the later is the real win in the long run." He references an article published recently in Foreign Affairs by Thomas Bollyky, which Moran summarizes by saying, "Bollyky argues coordinated action to confront communicable crises like HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis must be part of the world's approach to global health. But by ignoring far greater, non-communicable problems, he says, we doom Africans to low life expectancies and fail to create the impetus for reform and behavioral changes that could be transformational" (5/28).