Despite progress in curing diseases and reducing poverty, around 700 million people still live in extreme poverty – meaning living on less than $2.15 a day – and millions of children die annually from preventable diseases. There are a number of diseases that mainly affect vulnerable populations, such as malaria, HIV, malnutrition and parasitic worms. This not only causes direct suffering. It also worsens people’s conditions to earn a living, participate in educational efforts and improve their living situation. As families try to compensate for high infant mortality, birth rates tend to increase.
Source: Our World in Data
We know how to prevent and treat many of these diseases. It is also cost-effective – tablets against parasites and mosquito nets that protect against malaria cost only a few dollars. Yet efforts are underfunded and the diseases cause millions of deaths annually. The best opportunities for those who want to work on the problem seem to be donating money to effective charities, working to ensure that resources already spent on global health go where they do the most good, researching cost-effective interventions or working in, or starting, organizations implementing successful health interventions.
Jon has made an inspiring journey, from the arts and humanities, to dedicating his career to public health. In addition to his full-time job as a Tuberculosis (TB) Research Fellow, he has founded tb.care, a non-profit that aims to provide essential information about TB to affected people in rural areas in India.
Read the full story of Jon, and those of other world improvers
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Global health – article by 80,000 Hours
Global health cause area profile – article by EA Sweden
Top Charities – GiveWell's estimate of the most effective charities in global health
Understanding development and poverty alleviation – report that describes the background to the central bank of Sweden’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel 2019