Where should the aid money go?

Great Debates
1

This post refers to the sticky of madmonk’s post requesting donations for the operation of a child named Saad Dhiab in Iraq, who suffers from a birth defect of an externalized bladder.

I have full sympathies with the child and his family. No doubt it is a good cause and I have nothing against the people who are making donations and trying to help by taking up the cause with other blogs and messageboards etc. It is their money and they are free to use it to help any one they fancy.

But I do have this question. This kid has a congenital birth defect. From what I have understood, he is not going to die if the operation is not performed.

Now, Iraq is not the only country in this world where children with birth defects are being born. There are certainly many more children in this world, including Iraq, who are in need of medical assistance which if denied will cause them to actually die. Given this situation, how does it make sense for any aid organization to get donations and apply it to a specific individual who is not at the risk of death, when the same money can be used to help a similar person avoid certain death.

My point is that since the resource is scarce, spending of money meant for aid should be prioritized. Just as in a hospital emergency, the critically ill are attended to first, the aid money should first be spent on the crically ill children.

I don’t think it is ethical to apply money secured as aid from a general population and apply it preferentially to individuals who have for some reason earned the favour of someone in the aid organization or some other reason. The $30,000 required for this child’s operation to allow him to lead a normal life can certainly be used towards another child, maybe even more than one, by saving their very lives and allowing them just to live.

2

I’ll take it.

3

Wow, only $30,000? That’s a pittance compared the amount spent in Iraq. If the US had simply given the money we’ve spent on Iraq directly to the Iraqi people, the parents, by themselves, would have been able to easily afford this operation and had thousands of dollars left over.

4

You can’t prioritize like that or it will make you crazy. There is literally no end to that line of thinking, and if we all sat there thinking about that all day, nobody would ever get any help with anything.

The hardest part about helping people is actually getting to the people who need help. Sure, there are a lot of kids who’s lives could be saved by spending a few bucks on some simple medicine.

But how do you get to those kids? The big problem is that where people are suffering the most, there are not health centers, trained staff, medicine storage facilities, and basic stuff. Hell, a lot of lives could be saved just by building better toilets. The other day I taught a family who has a baby on death’s door how to make oral rehydration solution (e.g. salt water) and he’s improved a lot. I hope he pulls through. But how can you do that for every sick baby in every tiny village in every corner of the world.

In order to address these problems, you need to work large scale on a grassroots level, which takes a lot of time, money and planning. Suddenly, the solution isn’t so simple at all.

And I guess that is it in the end. There is nothing simple about aid. Half the things people do to help end up hurting people. Half the things people need are things they can’t get because of reasons nobody can control. So in the end you just do the best you can, help the ones you can, and pray for those you can’t.