Monday, October 3, 2011

Fighting Poverty

Here is compelling story from the UN Chief, about his childhood in Korea, and the world hunger is all about hand of politicians. In Africa particular, centuries their colonial masters stripped all the natural resources. Afterword long decades military dictatorships and endless civil wars.  Today hunger is all about man made disaster.   
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Like South Korea’s own experience in fighting poverty, Millennium Villages in Africa, and similar projects elsewhere, are now surging ahead in food production, children’s health, and in forging a sustainable pathway out of poverty itself. At the same time, I was impressed with one crucial difference between Korea’s efforts in the 1960’s and what is possible today. Touring the Mwandama Village, I saw the potential of modern technologies – smart phones and mobile broadband, improved seed varieties, the latest in drip irrigation, modern diagnostic tests for malaria, and low-cost solar-energy grids – to advance human well-being in ways that simply were not feasible even a few years ago.
I saw a community health worker using a smart phone to manage malaria treatment within a household. The worker used a low-cost diagnostic kit to confirm the malaria diagnosis, circumventing the need for a microscope and laboratory; a smart phone to key in the test results and receive advice from an “expert system” designed by public-health specialists; and state-of-the-art combination drug therapy to cure the illness. The child was cured within the home; a few years ago, that same child would have faced a high risk of death unless he was somehow brought to a distant clinic in time.

I saw other breakthrough changes in daily life. In a community that once could not feed itself, a giant warehouse was almost bursting with tons of surplus grain. By using high-yield seeds, better soil management, and proper row planting, the community has more than tripled its crop production, and villagers who previously were hungry grain buyers are now food-secure grain sellers.
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  We human are very resourceful, all the smart technology and minds are working together defeat the deadlock.