Previously, I outlined the basics of the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric. It takes the approach of converting all health burdens into equivalent “years of healthy life lost”: a year of blindness is counted as .6 lost years, a year of severe malnutrition is counted as .053 lost years, etc. This post discusses two common…
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I like it. How do I fund it?
The Community-Led Total Sanitation program looks like a potentially good target of funding. I like the approach: attacking all of the many sources of contamination (see diagram) rather than focusing narrowly on water. It’s been done before, with potentially encouraging results (see page 9). I haven’t seen enough on it to call it a “proven”…
Disability-Adjusted Life Years: Introduction
We’ve had many discussions in the comments about the metric known as Disability-Adjusted Life-Years (DALYs). The DALY essentially converts the burdens imposed by all health issues – from premature death to blindness to injuries – into a single, consistent unit. It is the metric of choice for the Disease Control Priorities Project as well as…
Infant mortality and overpopulation
When looking at programs that mostly target infant mortality, I’ve mostly thought of them as “population-increasing” programs. I’ve sympathized with donors who say that bigger populations might be the last thing poor villages need, and I’ve also assumed that “strict utilitarians” are likely to value such programs more than I do. It’s interesting to see…
A few thoughts on water
The cause of “water” is one of the more (initially) emotionally appealing, and probably marketable, causes in developing-world aid. Here are some thoughts on the cause, fresh off of reading the Copenhagen Consensus report on it: From what I’ve seen – both in terms of water-related literature and in terms of general morbidity data –…
Significant life change
If you could accomplish any of the following for the same cost, which would you choose? (1) Prevent 100 deaths-in-infancy, knowing that in all likelihood these 100 people will grow up to have consistently low income and poor health for their ~40-year-long lives. (2) Provide consistent, full nutrition and health care to 100 people, such…