"Here's the Best Thing the U.S. Has Done in Afghanistan"

[applegrove]

Here's the Best Thing the U.S. Has Done in Afghanistan

by Justin Sandefur at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/heres-the-best-thing-the-us-has-done-in-afghanistan/280484/

"SNIP.............................


While the U.S. military can win wars with overwhelming firepower, the conventional wisdom is that the U.S. lacks effective civilian tools to win the peace. Afghanistan's public health care system provides a powerful counterpoint: financed largely by American foreign aid, it has produced the most rapid increase in life expectancy observed anywhere on the planet. What went right? And why do American auditors and Congressional overseers suddenly want to pull the plug?

In late 2011, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced some astonishing news about progress in health and mortality in Afghanistan. The new findings came from the release of the 2010 Afghanistan Mortality Survey, the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken in Afghanistan. The survey showed that from 2004 to 2010, life expectancy had risen from just 42 years—the second lowest rate in the world—to 62 years, driven by a sharp decline in child mortality. As a result, nearly 100,000 Afghan children per year who previously would have died now don't.

In terms of lives saved, it is as if the entire Syrian tragedy were averted thanks to a U.S. aid program few Americans had ever heard of.

In terms of lives saved, it is as if the entire Syrian tragedy were averted thanks to a U.S. aid program few Americans had ever heard of.

This accomplishment was not just a victory for “aid,” generically. Afghanistan's progress against mortality reflects the particular success of a way of doing aid in the health sector that differed dramatically from the amateurish, militarized, and externally imposed modus operandi of the bulk of American aid to Afghanistan during the war.



.............................SNIP"

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, applegrove.

[geek tragedy]

2. That doesn't matter, because dronez nt

[Fumesucker]

3. Too bad we can't do it in the US

I doubt the Afghans have mandated private insurance.