The theme of the week is getting rid of preventable disease. What could be more worthy and obvious than that?

On May 15, at the tent at Lincoln Center, The Millennium Promise co-hosted a gala with a non-governmental organization called Malaria No More to raise funds and awareness to meet the goal of ending malaria in Africa by 2015. Millions of African children die every year simply because they don't have a $10 mosquito net. You can in fact sleep several children under one net so the cost of saving a child is probably more like $3 per child.

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, professor at Columbia University and the Director of the Earth Institute, did the ingenious thing of joining forces with media and Wall Street to jumpstart African Aid after decades of corruption, inefficiency, and strapped resources surrounding efforts by NGOs and institutions like the World Bank to help African nations. Roping everyone from Angelina Jolie and Rupert Murdoch to George Soros and Jimmy Carter, Dr. Sachs seems to be pulling off a project that has been perennially been dismissed by many naysayers. During dinner, I spoke to Steven Wisman, a political scientist and colleague of Dr. Sachs, who described how he worked with financial folks for the first time on decisions in African nations. He said, "We think on different planes," but at least they were talking. Patrick Pilkington of Tyson Foods flew in from Arkansas and told me that Tyson was going to send representatives to Africa for the first time to teach Africans how to raise chickens. Let's hope they also teach them how to keep the lions out of the coop.

The Osteoporosis Foundation held their gala the following night to raise awareness how osteoporosis sucks $60B in medicare bills, bills which are totally unnecessary if people just changed their diet a little. Diet changes such as drinking a little less alcohol could help prevent this disease from wreaking the damage it does to bones when people age. Well, good luck. The message seemed just a little ironic as everyone at the dinner easily drank six glasses of wine that evening. But hey, who is counting?

Ann Lee

5/19/08