How Can Science Help in the Fight Against Poverty?
A global scientific publishing initiative follows the philosophy of the Millennium Development Goals by tackling poverty from all angles
Published September 1, 2007
By Leslie Taylor
Academy Contributor
For the last decade, a technological marvel, has been saving lives in sub-Saharan Africa. It has no bells and whistles, no microprocessors or moving parts. It is a simple piece of insecticide-treated netting.
Bed nets made from this material remain effective deterrents against mosquitoes for three to five years. Donors, governments, and community leaders have embraced the low-tech tool as a valuable public health intervention and frequently hand out nets during immunization campaigns and antenatal clinics. About $5 buys a net that will shield two children from mosquitoes as they sleep—an incredibly effective means of preventing malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people a year.
The nets are a great example of what can be achieved when the scientific and development communities work together to identify needs and implement new ideas, says John McArthur, who was deputy director of the United Nations Millennium Project and is now associate director of the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. To put life-saving technology in the hands of the people it is designed to benefit requires the cooperative efforts of scientists, policy makers, and the communities they hope to serve, he says.
A Different Publish-Perish Paradigm
That philosophy of partnership underpins the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to achieve target levels of world-wide nutrition, health, literacy, and environmental sustainability that were set at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. It is also at the heart of a new program called Scientists Without Borders SM that was co-conceived by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) and the U.N. Millennium Project. And now a massive cooperative effort in the interest of global development is taking place among scientific publishers.
This year, halfway to the 2015 deadline that world leaders set for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, 230 science journals worldwide will simultaneously publish papers or special editions on the topic of poverty and human development. Publications participating in the Council of Science Editors initiative include wide-circulation journals such as Science and Nature and more specialized volumes such as the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies, the Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, and the Wisconsin Medical Journal.
The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences will publish a volume titled Reducing the Impact of Poverty on Health and Human Development: Scientific Approaches.
A Multidisciplinary Approach
The Annals volume, edited by Stephen Kaler and Owen Rennert of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, takes a multidisciplinary look at the issues facing the world’s poor. Chapters address public health issues in the developing world as well as specific diseases associated with poverty, such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, lymphatic filiariasis, and hookworm. Other chapters discuss the poor’s access to health care services, education, proper nutrition, and housing.
The volume will highlight diverse areas of research. It will include a paper on measles by Samuel L. Katz, chairman emeritus of pediatrics at Duke University, who was awarded the 2007 Pollin Prize in recognition of his contributions to pediatric infectious disease research and vaccine development; a paper titled “Sustainable Transfer of Biotechnology to Developing Countries,” by Eva Harris, who used the money from her 1997 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship to establish the Sustainable Sciences Institute, an organization that helps scientists around the world gain access to state-of-the-art training and equipment; and a paper by Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman, professor of economics at The University of Chicago, about the consequences of poverty for human skill formation.
Poverty Is a Many-Stranded Problem
Bashir Jama, author of “Agriculture in Developing Nations,” a paper in the upcoming Annals volume, spent 19 years with the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry before becoming a policy advisor to a U.N. Development Program group working on poverty and the Millennium Goals. He says it’s very difficult to tease apart the problems of poverty and address any single factor in isolation. Agriculture is inextricably linked to health, he says.
For instance, malaria and other tropical diseases can impede worker productivity in farming communities, resulting in reduced crop yields, followed by hunger, and increased vulnerability to disease.
And illiteracy can be an obstacle to heartier harvests. Training in new farm techniques or agriculture technologies can’t be distributed in writing to farmers who can’t read, he notes. Instead, non-governmental organizations and governments must offer in-person training or demonstration farms.
“As scientists we have fairly good knowledge of the ecology and the technical issues that are slowing down progress or that can enhance production,” says Jama. “But giving people the skills they need when they live in remote areas—in areas with limited energy supplies, no electricity or clean water—is challenging.”
Within select communities known as Millennium Villages, networks of scientists with diverse areas of expertise work with residents to address the intertwining issues of agricultural productivity, health, education, and access to markets. Projects to increase food yields and improve access to education and health services coincide with initiatives to improve village infrastructure—roads, sanitation, communication technology, and energy. Villagers are also given advice on enterprise diversification and environmental management.
Leverage Existing Technologies
Residents of the 12 Millennium Villages in 10 African countries have seen tremendous improvements in quality of life since the project started, Jama says. “In one or two growing seasons we’ve seen incredible increases in agricultural productivity, phenomenal decreases in hunger, improved health with a reduction in malaria and waterborne diseases, and safe drinking water becoming available,” he says.
Successes at the Millennium Village sites were not the result of exclusive breakthrough technologies, but came about because experts in a variety of fields took action to supply villagers with a range of basic technologies, such as fertilizer, medication, and water purification systems. “We have the basic know-how,” says John McArthur. “The question in the immediate term is how to mobilize existing technologies.”
Frequently, technologies created for another purpose or discovered in the course of pure research can be greatly beneficial. “It’s a matter of adapting good technologies that may exist in other countries,” says Bashir Jama.
Seemingly uncomplicated technology can have a dramatic impact. For example, the treadle pump—an inexpensive, simple- to-operate, foot-powered pump that can draw water from a well or spring—has revolutionized farmers’ ability to grow food during the dry season. “It’s a good example of a situation where, if the investment is there, it could really increase irrigation, and improve income and nutrition,” says Jama.
Energy and Resource Use
Improved cook stove technologies have also done much to improve the lives of the poor, according to Daniel Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at University of California, Berkeley, who contributed a paper titled “Energy & Resource Use in Developing Countries” to the new Annals volume. Respiratory illnesses are one of the biggest health problems in the developing world, where most people typically cook using very simple fires—burning wood or dung on just a few stones. “Making stoves more efficient has actually cut down on one of the leading causes of illnesses worldwide,” he says.
Kammen, who is also founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, an organization that focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems, has seen how the timely application of technology can transform communities. His group works on projects such as promoting sustainable biomass energy management in Zimbabwe, evaluating the performance of single junction amorphous silicon modules used in photovoltaic systems in Kenya, and creating new technologies such as the UV-Tube—an inexpensive and easy-to-use household water disinfection device that uses ultraviolet light to inactivate pathogens.
While each country has slightly different needs, Kammen explains, in most parts of the developing world the basic issues are the same. “There’s a lack of access to clean water, a lack of electricity to do things like read at night or run a business, and a lack of access to education,” he says. “There are some constants, and those mean you can work pretty hard on a project in one country and it’s likely to be useful to people in many other parts of the world. It’s not like a solution you develop in Mozambique is only useful there.”
Create New Technologies
For problems of the poor that do not yet have technological solutions, scientists have found new ways to obtain funding to do the research they hope will ultimately alleviate suffering.
Peter Hotez, editor-in-chief of a soon-to-launch Public Library of Science journal called Neglected Tropical Diseases, wrote a paper about hookworm for the Annals volume. He is president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to provide the world’s poorest people with access to low-cost, safe vaccines and drug treatments for neglected tropical diseases—13 parasitic and bacterial infections that produce chronic and disabling conditions. Many people have not heard of the diseases—including scariasis, hookworm infection, trichuriasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and trachoma—but they are devastating.
“Neglected tropical diseases are one of the primary reasons why poor people remain poor. In some ways [what they do to a person] is worse than death,” says Hotez. “They destroy quality of life and are one of the major reasons we have poor economic development in Africa and elsewhere. These are the diseases that are keeping people mired in this horrible cycle of destitution and despair.”
Yet, until recently, little attention was paid to these scourges. While the private sector has been willing to invest money in research that might lead to an AIDS vaccine, for which there is still a substantial market in the U.S. and Europe, “There’s no way you could ever make a profit on a hookworm vaccine,” says Hotez.
Vaccines and Medication
Thankfully, the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative, a public development partnership sponsored by the Sabin Vaccine Institute with major funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is working to develop and disseminate an effective, safe, and low-cost vaccine. “It’s a unique model for making a product for people who can’t afford to pay for it,” Hotez says.
While the vaccine is not yet ready to be distributed, the Global Network for Tropical Disease Control, a program of the Sabin Institute, distributes a “rapid impact” package of medication that includes four anti-parasitic drugs to treat seven neglected diseases. The health kit, which costs only 50 cents per person per year, greatly reduces rates of morbidity, blindness, and skin disease. Yet it is only a short-term solution because diseases such as hookworm have high rates of transmission and re-infection, Hotez explains.
“Millennium development goal number six is ‘to control and fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.’ We feel we can make an impact right now in the ‘other diseases’ category,” he says.
Questions of Investment: Time and Money
While sufficient will and technologies are available to raise the standard of living in the developing world, funding is a primary barrier to success. Too little money is devoted to the cause, and there is no consensus about how the money that is devoted should be spent, experts say.
“A rule of thumb, which varies a little by country and by need, is that it takes a basic investment of about $110 per person per year to achieve the goals outlined in the Millennium Development Project,” says John McArthur. “Right now there is, on average, $25 per person in foreign aid going into these places. That needs to be scaled up two- or three-fold by 2015. There’s not enough money getting to where it needs to go, and a greater share needs to go to practical technologies, like long lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, fertilizer, or drilling bore wells.”
The Need for Collaboration
Bashir Jama worries that, too frequently, what scientists have discovered about issues of development is not being incorporated into national, regional, and global programs. “Decisions are made in a vacuum as though science doesn’t exist,” he says. “Donors, international governments, the policy makers need to take advantage of this knowledge and to link up better with scientists in designing systems that work.”
At the same time, it is important for scientists to make the effort to collaborate with policy makers and with one another in the fight against poverty, suggests Hotez, sharing this quote from Dr. Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine, after whom the Sabin Institute is named: “A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might reduce suffering rests on the shelf.”
Also read: Scientists Step into New Roles to End Poverty
About the Author
Leslie Taylor is associate editor of Update and of the Academy’s online public gateway, Science & the City.
