WHO/UNICEF: Diarrhea Kills 1.5 Million Children Per Year

UN officials calculate that 1.5 million children per year die of diarrhea, often easily preventable:

Ann Veneman, the head of Unicef said this was a ‘tragedy.’

‘Inexpensive and effective treatments for diarrhea exist, but in developing countries only 39 percent of children with diarrhea receive the recommended treatment,’ Veneman said.

A new vaccine was developed for Rotavirus, an organism responsible for more than 40 percent of all diarrhea, but it remains out of reach in most of the developing world, the UN said.

That’s former Bush cabinet member Ann Veneman, so it’s not like this is special socialist math or anything. I find it endlessly frustrating that these kind of stories go unremarked in elite political commentary circles, but whenever there’s some pseudo-plausible argument that launching a bloody, multi-billion dollar invasion of Iraq or Sudan or Burma or whatnot everyone’s buzzing about it.

The GAVI Alliance funds a rotavirus program in conjunction with the CDC and the WHO that could almost certainly use more funding. This kind of issue is also an excellent example of the kind of health problem where we should be trying to rely more on prizes than on patents to finance R&D.