AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion... It's, what, a few months in Iraq.
Diarrhea, 90 percent of which is caused by food and water contaminated by excrement, kills a child every fifteen seconds. That's more than AIDS, malaria, or measles, combined. Human feces are an impressive weapon of mass destruction.
I travel the world visiting global health programs as an ambassador for the global health organization, PSI, and sometimes the disconnect I see is truly striking: people can get cold Coca Cola, but far too infrequently malaria drugs; most own mobile phones, but don't have equal access to pre-natal care.
There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.
I caught malaria, and the medicines caused a hallucination. I dreamt I won an Oscar for acting. I know it sounds stupid, but it was so real, and I just knew then it would happen.
Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.
There is no question that global warming will have a significant impact on already existing problems such as malaria, malnutrition, and water shortages. But this doesn't mean the best way to solve them is to cut carbon emissions.
The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly 'cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.
Tackling malaria in a country like the Central African Republic is a huge uphill battle, and my experiences there have been a healthy dose of reality, fueling my own sense of urgency to do my part in reducing the preventable suffering of the incredible women I met.
There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.