One hour of Iraq spending could treat 817,000 cases of malaria

[unhappycamper]

One hour of Iraq spending could treat 817,000 cases of malaria
Roger Brigham
Published: Friday November 30, 2007

President Bush’s request to Congress in October for an additional $45.9 billion for the war in Iraq has brought the total federal outlay since the war began to $196.4 billion. A Democratic report earlier this month estimated that the wars' total costs could be much higher -- as much as $3.5 trillion -- if "hidden" costs like the rising price of oil, veterans' healthcare and interest on borrowed money are included.

RAW STORY sat down with some figures and asked: If the money for war on Iraq had been spent on other programs, such as education and health, what could the money have bought?

Here's what we came up with.

– The College Board puts the average annual cost of a public college education at $13,589. Had that $196.4 billion been invested four years ago on education, assuming each student took four years of schooling, it could have fully funded 3.6 million college graduates during that period. If the cost reaches $3.5 trillion, as Democrats contend, the money would fund 64 million grads -- some 256 million years of schooling.

– In 2006, the Senate asked for $230 million to buy three V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that critics said would never be combat effective. That money could have provided health care coverage to the nearly 230,000 California children who do not have it, a cost that comes in at just under $1,200 per year per child according to the California HealthCare Foundation.

– A far bigger killer than Saddam Hussein or al Qaeda over the past few decades has been malaria, which is on the rise in Brazil, large parts of Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, where it is the biggest barrier to economic development. While the Defense Department said in 2006 the war was costing $100,000 a minute, the World Health Organization was estimating malaria was killing two children every minute and more than a million people every year. The annual cost in terms of lost productivity and treatment in tropical Africa alone is estimated at $1.8 billion – about one billion more than was being lost two decades ago. At $7.34 per treatment, one hour's worth of expenditures on Iraq could have treated 817,000 people in Africa. The $196.4 billion spent on the war altogether could have provided doses for all 600 million people stricken globally every year... for 44 years.


Rest of article at: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/If_spent_in_Africa_money_for_1025.html

[PDJane]

1. It's a matter of priorities........

and the death of 1/2 to 2/3 of the world's population, as espoused by PNAC, among others, is more important than saving the ignorant and brown masses.