As tech and AI donors enter global health, effective altruism’s focus on low-cost, proven interventions like bed nets looks set to grow in influence.
In the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Resolve to Save Lives President and CEO Dr. Tom Frieden argues that funding policy change is a massive missed opportunity for effective altruism. He also addresses three common concerns about this approach.
Dr. Frieden draws on two key examples from Resolve to Save Lives’ portfolio: hypertension control and trans fat elimination.
“Consider hypertension. A $20 million donation buys a year of medication to prevent heart attacks and strokes for 4 million people at $5 each. That would prevent at least 22,000 heart attacks, strokes, and deaths at less than $1,000 each.
But the same $20 million spent to help countries adopt and implement better hypertension control policies could treat millions more patients, for many years.
Before 2018, trans fat was estimated to have killed 500,000 people a year. With funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Founders Pledge, and others, Resolve to Save Lives, the organization I lead, partnered with the World Health Organization to call for its elimination. More than 60 countries, home to more than half the world’s population, have adopted policies to eliminate trans fat. This will save more than 9 million lives in the next 30 years for a philanthropic contribution of less than $40 million — less than $5 per life saved. That’s as much as 1,000 times more lives saved per dollar than bed nets. And bed nets must be replaced every three years; a trans fat ban protects an entire country indefinitely.”
