Den kendte britiske avis, The Guardian, skriver onsdag på lederplads:
Researchers at Cardiff University have concluded that Monday of this week was the most depressing day of the year. Yet this Monday might – just possibly might – prove to have been a turning point in the fortunes of the most deprived of the worlds continents.
Monday was when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave 75 million US dollar a year for 10 years to the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation (Gavi) which Mr Gates helped to set up in 2000.
It was an act of philanthropy of the highest – and most cost-effective – kind which will save hundreds of thousands of young lives in the developing world, especially Africa. In 2002, around 10,5 million children under five died, of whom 1,4 million perished from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccines.
The timing is coincidental, but the Gates initiative is a reminder that even the death toll after the tsunami, horrific though it was, is on a lesser scale than this most preventable of scourges.
There is now a good chance that the Gates gift will act as a catalyst to persuade others, especially governments, to come up with the rest of the money needed to reach the 400 million dollar a year that Gavi says is needed to complete the job.
The signs are encouraging. On Monday Norway announced that it would be giving 290 million dollar over 10 years to the fund and Wednesday Gordon Brown committed Britain to a highly commendable 1,8 billion dollar over 15 years.
Mr Brown sees Gavi as a trailblazer for his even more ambitious plans to persuade governments to double global aid to 100 billion dollar under his International Finance Facility, about which the US administration is sceptical. The chancellor will promote it at the Davos economic meeting this week and at next weeks G8 summit in London.
The revival of philanthropy this week coincides with figures showing that the economies of Africa, which have stagnated or even contracted during the past 20 years, may at long last be starting to recover.
Tuesdays UN world situation report noted that the economy of Africa as a whole expanded by 4,5 per cent last year and that sub-Saharan Africa alone, the poorest part of the continent, grew by 5,5 per cent. Similar growth is expected this year.
Although such rates are below the 7 per cent a year needed to attain the UN millennium development goals for that region, they are significantly better than the previous three years.
If a partnership between private philanthropy and public money can improve the health and economies of the poorest nations, albeit from an extremely low base, then desperately deprived regions such as Africa may indeed be about to turn a corner.
