IN a recent Time magazine article, Michael Elliott, President and CEO of the global ONE campaign, wrote about how, contrary to popular belief, the world has in fact become a better place to live in—given that more are healthy and prosperous, compared to decades ago.
Elliott pointed out that while in 1990 over a third of the globe’s population were living in extreme poverty, by 2011 that number had gone down to 14.5 percent. Where 80 percent of the world’s infants now receive lifesaving vaccines, in the 1970s only 5 percent did so.
And with today’s innovations constituting what Elliott described as an “age of miracles,” many people are now faced with opportunities once unheard of.
Bill and Melinda Gates echoed this optimism in their foundation’s annual letter and global call to action. They wrote that while they have seen exciting changes in the past 15 years, there is now a singular opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of the world’s poor by 2030—at a pace and degree never seen before in human history.
They banked on four breakthroughs taking place: the reduction of child deaths across the world and eradication of more diseases (like polio and Guinea worm); agricultural improvements that will allow Africa and other developing areas to feed themselves; mobile banking to open up financial opportunities to the global poor; and, better educational software revolutionizing learning.
Their rallying call is that these changes will come sooner if technological innovation intensifies and the pace at which they are translated to real human benefit quickens. They also emphasized the need for “global citizens” to collaborate towards sustaining the momentum for change.
In the Philippines, a recent Social Weather Station survey may have shown that while the annual hunger rate (18.3 percent) is at its lowest in seven years, 3.8 million Filipinos were still starving as of December 2014.
Worse, such hunger adversely affects our youngest children, given that nearly a third of them under five today have stunted growth while a fifth are underweight. We are still raising generations of Filipinos who will face health problems in the future for not receiving proper nutrition during their most important, formative years.
The country may be undergoing some major transformations, marked in part by an economy no longer on the downtrend. But amid such growth, we have the rich still getting indecently richer in common with the fabulously rich of other countries, while the great majority are impoverished by widespread unemployment and unfair taxation and social policies.
Michael Elliot may be right about the world in general, but not necessarily so about specific countries. The breakthroughs and innovations the Gateses mention are truly promising, but these have barely scratched the surface here at home. We may be living in an age of miracles, but such miracles have yet to be seen in the Philippines.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.