[kulahan]

Not an uncommon problem with charities working with foreign nations. They fail to capture the local populations because they think of these problems in a vacuum.

Person lacks reliable transportation -> give them some -> problem solved

There's another example - a charity provides treated mosquito nets for free to millions of families in Africa. Great!

People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them treated nets -> problem solved!

But in reality it went like this:

People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them treated nets -> many of these families are starving -> fine mesh nets are great at catching small fish -> all their food is now infected with insecticide, mosquitos continue to access the family as well

[fwipsy]

Givewell did an analysis and concluded that while this is a problem, it's not nearly enough to offset the benefit which comes from using the nets for their intended purpose: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/in...

Certainly improving public health in developing countries is a hard problem! But it's not impossible and existing efforts have had an effect.