A recent article in the New York Times offers a much altered story of death and destruction vis-à-vis the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Here it is, by the numbers:

The report said as many as 895,000 people moved into camps after the earthquake, not the 1.5 million estimated by the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization. At most, an estimated 375,000 people remain displaced, with a maximum of 66,620 living in camps…contrary to the migration organization’s tally of more than 600,000 people living in camps.

The amount of rubble that must be cleared…[is approximated by the report ] at 3.7 million cubic meters, not the 20 million to 25 million originally estimated by the Army Corps of Engineers or the 10 million the United Nations reported this year.

…the report’s most incendiary figure: an estimated quake death toll of 46,000 to 85,000 people. The Haitian government announced in January that 316,000 had been killed; in the initial weeks after the quake, it said about 230,000 had died.

How does this make us feel about data collection? What sampling and analysis mechanisms were used? How can they be improved? Perhaps most importantly, how will this effect the rest of the aid (63% of the pledged $4.6bil)? Will countries reduce their commitments? So many questions!

This is an excerpt from an article in the Huffington Post today:

One of the many results of technological advancement is that nonprofits can no longer ignore the world outside their doors. Nor can they realistically expect to survive if they are unwilling or unable to embrace the developments around them…

I don’t know how profound this is; I’m not sure that non-profits have necessarily had their heads in the sand, historically, but I think there is evidence that suggests that organizations that maximize social networking and new media outlets to associate their brands with something more impactful and novel (an updated way of solving an old problem; maternal mortality, e.g.) are more successful than those that do not. This is to say nothing of the actual program work – it’s all about presentation. And, ideally, with this new emphasis on public presentation comes more transparency and accountability. We (the philanthropic public) start asking harder questions if we don’t find the information in the public realm; requests that “successful” programs are predicated on data, for example. This results in more transparency that then helps weed the lesser out from the superior solutions to social problems.

This slideshow was made by Dave Melville, friend and supporter of C2C, down in Port-au-Prince with Liz last week.

C2C was asked to present at a conference of Fulbright scholars from the developing world – all studying at universities in the US – on the intersection between innovations in science and technology and global health issues. There were about 80 scholars in attendance and two other panelists in addition to me:

Dr. Bill Rodriguez founded Daktari Diagnostics, which is creating low-cost, durable field equipment for CD4 tests (which measure the load of HIV disease-fighting cells in blood; it’s the leading test for assessing HIV stage and prognosis). Prior to starting Daktari, Dr. Rodriguez returned to Harvard (where he’d been on faculty and started research programs in global health policy and global health diagnostics) and helped launch the Global Health Delivery Project. He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on global HIV and tuberculosis treatment, has been an advisor to more than a dozen national governments, and served as a member of the WHO’s global HIV guidelines committee.

Jennifer Staples-Clark founded Unite For Sight while a sophomore at Yale University in fall 2000. With Jennifer’s leadership and vision as Chief Executive Officer, Unite For Sight is now a leading global health delivery organization that provides cost-effective care to the world’s poorest people. By investing human and financial resources into the social ventures of eye clinics in developing countries, Unite For Sight has provided eye care to more than 1.2 million people living in extreme poverty, including more than 42,000 sight-restoring surgeries.

These are heavyweights in the “technological solutions applied to health problems” space, and it was a great honor for me to be speaking alongside them. That’s an environment that most charges me – a space where a group of highly motivated and creative people get together to discuss new ways of tackling old problems.

One thing I talked about yesterday that C2C hasn’t discussed previously is the idea of the Three Delays, which I offer as reasons for the gap between known essential care treatments and the women and children who are dying for lack of access to them.
1) The delay in deciding to seek care, which speaks to a lack of education in the patient population.
2) The delay in reaching care, which suggests a lack of adequate infrastructure, specifically that infrastructure is not proximal to the needy populations.
3) The delay in accessing quality care, which points to an inadequacy of clinical training and/or diagnostic and pharmaceutical resources.

C2C seeks to tackle all three of these delays with our bifurcated model of facility (infrastructure, #2) and program support to local partners (education and resources, #s 1 and 3).

Another thing I discussed in yesterday’s presentation were reasons beyond “we know what works” for focusing health services on women and children. Specifically, that it’s good business (the return on investment is high: money spent on primary health ed and services now returns exponential savings in healthcare costs to health systems later) and good foreign economic policy (10 of the 15 largest importers of US goods and services are graduates of US foreign aid programs, and women in the developing world make up the largest emerging market this planet has ever seen). I find these arguments extremely compelling. It’s not an entirely emotional investment; rather, a sound economic move.

I’m returning to the Fulbright conference tomorrow to participate on a judging panel as teams of students present interventions based on case studies of global epidemics (HIV), natural disasters (cyclones), and localized disease outbreaks (cholera). I’m looking forward to more dynamic and thoughtful discussion!

According to Forbes Magazine’s annual Mother’s Day survey, Americans love their moms to the tune of $15.7 billion. More than 9 out of 10 consumers plan to celebrate Mother’s Day, and on average we’ll each spend $148, up 5% from last year. No one here is doubting that Mom deserves a very serious “thank you” for 9 months of raging hormones, stretch marks, childbirth and a lifetime of ego-boosting and moral support. No. One. In fact, my mom gets a 70% cut of all the profits I make from this blog. (“That can’t possibly be true.” I mean, technically, it’s not false –>profits=0.) However, what if half of those of us planning to celebrate made a donation in honor of our moms and in support of other women struggling with motherhood around the world? That’s $7.85 billion we could invest in health strategies, education systems, and economic opportunities bent on women and motherhood.

To put that in perspective, the U.S. now spends $474 million on the problems faced by women, and the Obama administration’s proposed 2012 budget would add another $372 million for a total $864 mil. That’s 11% of what HALF of American consumers planning to celebrate Mother’s Day will spend, which is just wild.

As Hallmark Holiday consumers, we spend a lot. Collectively, it follows, we could also save a lot.

Christy Turlington Burns’ directorial debut, “No Woman No Cry,” is having its US TV broadcast premiere on the Oprah Winfrey Network May 7th at 9:30 ET. To check out Turlington Burn’s recommendations for how to watch and get involved with spreading the word, click here.

In her gripping directorial debut, Christy Turlington Burns shares the powerful stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States.