[walsh-cloonagh]

It is possible to save a life for $3,340 by donating to the Against Malaria Foundation [1].

Helping desperately poor people is a surely virtuous thing to do and helping them efficiently by giving them money via GiveDirectly, as suggested in this article and the linked 2003 NYT article, is all the better.

But, right now there are worse things to be than desperately poor: like being a kid in Africa who dies of malaria for want of a malaria net.

Given the poor state of medicine and public health in places where people are dying for want of a few thousand dollars, optimizing poverty relief programs seems premature.

And for what it's worth the people you'll save are also desperately poor.

[1] http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF#Cost...

[Mikeb85]

Malaria generally kills only the young and weak. It's like the flu over here. The problem is malnutrition. Hence why a large amount of mosquito nets are never used to sleep under, but rather as fishing nets.

I know people who have had malaria (family that lives in a tropical 3rd world country). All survived.

Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu. The answer of course is to be in good health, and to have access to medicine.

But we don't live with malaria, so feel-good gestures are as far as we go.

[shadowfiend]

Please do a detailed reading of the linked evaluation of the Against Malaria Foundation. There is a fairly rigorous discussion of the impact on both fatal and non-fatal potential malaria infections, as well as how the evaluation is done. While anecdotal evidence is more emotionally powerful, there seems to be pretty strong large-scale evidence that at least in the places AMF targets, the nets are effective at a relatively low cost.

[Mikeb85]

I have and I'm sure the mosquito nets are effective.

The point isn't to say they're not, but rather to say the nations that have been most successful at preventing malaria deaths are those that are most developed, or have access to anti-malarial drugs (which are dirt cheap).

The flu kills thousands every year and used to kill many more (the 1918 flu epidemic killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the world), but we don't even consider it to be fatal anymore due to our level of nutrition and medical care - which comes from development.

Also keep in mind the US used to have malaria-spreading mosquitoes and a fair amount of malaria-deaths, but now it's considered eliminated as a public health concern. Maybe some of the techniques it used could be applied to Africa, and not just band-aids that keep Africa hooked on western 'aid'.

[learnstats2]

> we don't even consider it to be fatal anymore due to our level of nutrition and medical care - which comes from development.

This is absolutely nothing to do with human development.

Good health can compound problems with flu because it leads to a cytokine storm - flu epidemics tend to kill healthy young people disproportionately.

The scientific community has been extremely concerned about another influenza epidemic because there is no guarantee that we can do anything about it, medically speaking.

If there was an epidemic on that scale again, the best practice is to close schools and workplaces, to restrict travel. In other words: to temporarily stop the benefits of human development.

[walsh-cloonagh]

Giving out mosquito nets to conquer malaria makes as much sense as giving out medical masks to conquer the flu.

77% of maleria deaths are kids under 5 according to the WHO [1]. They're giving out mosquito nets to prevent children from dying of malaria.

But we don't live with malaria, so feel-good gestures are as far as we go.

For every 322 children under 5 protected by nets, one survives who would otherwise die [2]. This isn't the right thing to be cynical about.

[1] http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/ [2] http://www.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Nets...

[JoeAltmaier]

Confused: you can't 'have had' malaria, its a lifetime affliction isn't it?

[Mikeb85]

It can recur, and you can get it multiple times, but no, not a lifetime affliction.

[noselasd]

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/faqs.html#treatment

[peterfirefly]

Yes, but it only breaks out occasionally.

If you get it as a child, you will most likely end up with a lower IQ, though, which certainly is a lifetime affliction.

How much malaria costs when it is dormant is something I don't know. My intuition is that there is a cost (for example in a heightened inflammation response which is hard on the body) but I simply don't know.

[zo1]

You can get re-infected. As far as I know, it doesn't stay dormant in your body (like say Herpes). But I'm not a doctor, just had it a few mild times as a kid.

[JupiterMoon]

> it doesn't stay dormant in your body

Yes it does.

> just had it a few mild times as a kid.

Nope you have it. When you are in poor general health it will probably resurface. Good luck.

[shadowfiend]

GiveWell has also named GiveDirectly one of their top charities (alongside the Against Malaria Foundation), with their detailed reasoning here: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-dir... , for what it's worth. The reasoning is a bit different from AMF, but it's still strong reasoning.