I went to a seminar on Development Economics yesterday and, while expecting to be completely depressed by it, by the end I was completely uplifted. Good news concerning the third world doesn't tend to come around often, thus I feel compelled to recount and share.
The lecture was held by a Swedish proffessor who is, as she put it, the marine core of economists in that she with her team, sponsered by the world bank, carries out field research in sub-Sahara African countries. The Ugandan minister for health approached her to investigate why, after he had invested so much money in free health clinics all around Uganda, the mortality rates of the population had not changed at all and were still diabolical.
After much reseach, the professor and her team found that, although villages had access to free, fully equipped health clinics with trained doctors/nurses, they were not functioning at all as they should. Doctors/nurses being idle, ignoring massive lines of people outside in order to sit and chat and receive their paychecks. The system was completely corrupt in that if someone wanted to get treament from the free public health clinics they would have to pay cash to the doctors. However, the people in the villages who were subjected to this system knew there were problems and were eager to get them solved, simply had no empowerment to do so.
Thus, the Swedish professors team set up an experiment in 25 clinics in which, with as little White intervention as possible, talks were organised between the villagers and the Health workers (who were also part of the village) in order to sort through the issues. Simply talking and coming up with solutions together. After this had been carried out and conclusions apparently reached, the Swedish professor left the villages for a year before coming back and investigating if there had been any improvements.
Mortality rates had cut by a third. With such staggering results, the Ugandan health minister is planning to carry out the same procedure in all health clinics in Uganda.
Just by communication, no extra money, funding, nothing, that great evil of corruption and idleness was majorly overcome. Perhaps people aren't as bad as I thought?