February 13, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Did Melinda Gates exaggerate the success of antimalaria efforts?
In a video interview with The Financial Times, Ms. Gates said that “malaria incidence is down in countries such as Zambia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. It’s down in some countries by over 50 percent and some by 60 percent.”
But William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University and frequent critic of foreign-assistance programs, questions her data on his Aid Watch blog.
“Real victories against malaria would be great, but false victories can mislead and distract critical malaria efforts. Alas, Mr. and Mrs. Gates are repeating numbers that have already been discredited,” he writes.
While Rwanda is a success story in the fight against malaria, Mr. Easterly writes that the World Health Organization in September said the results in Ethiopia and Zambia were unclear.
The Gateses had likely gleaned the information from a preliminary report the World Health Organization released in early 2008, which was later modified, Mr. Easterly says.
“Maybe the Gates foundation should be funding more rigorous data collection. With all this effort to fight the tragedy of malaria, it’s even more tragic that the malaria warriors can’t even get accurate reports of who is sick and dying when and where,” he writes.
UPDATE: In response to Mr. Easterly’s charges, a foundation official defended Ms. Gates’s statement. “We are seeing some encouraging signs of progress against malaria in key countries,” he writes in an e-mail message to The Chronicle.
He pointed to studies that supported her claims like an article in Malaria Journal in January that said malaria cases in children fell 73 percent in Ethiopia after the widespread introduction of bed nets and malaria treatments
The official also writes that the foundation is supporting several efforts to improve the collection of information on antimalaria projects. “There is an ongoing need for more robust and accurate data on malaria in developing countries,” he writes.
What do you think?
