NickLaing
Bio
Participation1
I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 35 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
How I can help others
Understanding the NGO industrial complex, and how aid really works (or doesn't) in Northern Uganda
Global health knowledge
Posts 16
Comments1060
While reading the economist yesterday, an article in their fantastic "The Africa gap" series felt strangely familiar - I'd read these ideas last year in @Karthik Tadepalli's fantastic series on economic growth in LMIC's. I appreciated this section
Instead of many large firms with salaried staff, Africa has lots of micro-enterprises and informal workers. More than 80% of employment in Africa is informal, according to the International Labour Organisation. Roughly half of informal workers in cities are self-employed, doing everything from crafting Instagram advertising to fixing roofs. Many Africans mix formal work with informal hustles, which are often poorly paid. Most would love a steady job. Mr Tadepalli suggests that many of the “self-employed” may just be the unemployed “in disguise”
I shouldn't have been surprised to see Karthik's quotes and research directly referred to in the article itself! Nice work Karthik and great to see your work get recognised in the mainstream as well as on the neglected global development corners of the EA forum ;).
Thanks pablo I completely agree with the amazing contributions and work thinking about all those important career related things.
Although like your say the work doesn't assume a position, the current website and materials kind of do.
And if you take the snapshot in time now of 80k and send a more naive EA interested person to their website, you still get a longtermist bent feel even though I agree that's not what's behind it.
I'm (mostly) a lefty, I really don't like the guy and I think he might be net positive still. Normalizing EVs and battery power in general is so huge for climate change, and I think the jury is still out on whether his X takeover and his political efforts are that negative. I think given Trump's overwhelming win, it's not so plausible he made the difference in the election, and now he's in the mix he might well be an opposing positive force too (for example his recent pro immigration influence)
But this is wild speculation and super shallow. Interested to hear other thoughts.
I love your framing of this cost and agree with your central thesis, that cash transfers to families with sickle cell might be more cost effective than general cash transfers, while not necessarily being the most cost-effective option. It may well be the most cost-effective of the projects you reviewed as well, so kudos for getting in behind this.
My criticism is more that if the NGO has a great database and connection with families with sickle cell, why not use that infrastructure and the money to help the kids medically in ways more effective than a cash transfer? Buying mosquito nets, deworming and I would argue giving proper medical treatment for sickle cell are more cost-effective than cash transfers.
In this case I would boldly predict you could do more good by actually providing the best medical care you could with that money rather than giving it to the family. Also in sickle cell where medical catastrophes are basically guaranteed, cash transfers might well get used up BEFORE catastrophes happen which would be tragic.
I'm assuming this stuff below is not readily publicly available in Cameroon - some of it might well be then you didn't
If I had 47 dollars a month to help kids with sickle cell I would set up accounts with local health facilities to provide these services for each kid.
1) Pay for the basic monthly meds for sickle cell (pen-V, folate, malaria prevention, pain relief) ($8 a month)
2) Most of these kids would benefit from hydroxyurea ($10 a month)
3) Send a motorbike to pick the kid to take to hte health center AS SOON as they get sick - fast access to healthcare is critical in sickle cell ($5 per month)
4) Administrating the project ($15 a month assuming something like one/two people administrating 20 families)
5) A pool of money which pays for catatrophic hospital admissions when needed ($9)
I might be missing something or overstepping with this suggestion but that's my hottish take ;) For background I'm a doctor here in Uganda with a decent amount of experience with Sickle cell.