Monday 16 April 2018

Wrong priorities

Nearly a billion people in Commonwealth countries alone suffer from poor vision but do not have spectacles, a 700 year old invention. This was pointed out in a letter to the press signed by luminaries such as Tony Blair, John Major, MPs from both sides of the house and luvvies such as Lenny Henry, Hugh Laurie and Eddie Izzard. Not unreasonably they ask how UN goals on health, education, poverty and gender equality can be achieved if a third of the world's population cannot see clearly. They called on Commonwealth leaders meeting this week, three quarters of whom will be using vision aids, to have the vision to do something about it in their countries.

It also left me wondering about our priorities for international aid. I've written previously about the bizarre international rules we decide to follow in allocating aid, making it hard for us to help hurricane victims because their countries aren't officially poor enough, for example. (Grand Turk and Chaos, 19 September 2017). It seems not only can't we help poor Commonwealth countries rebuild their devasted communities, we presumably can't help them see to do it. Or at least if we do, it doesn't "count" towards the 0.7% target that hardly any other country meets, even though it isn't even a penny in our pound as it were. (Still £14 billion, mind).

One of the young project managers at my last place of work used to say "they should look at their priorities" when he thought poor decisions were being taken, whether by individuals or groups. I make the same suggestion to our government - discard the rules on overseas aid and use some common sense. And to leaders of now relatively wealthy Commonwealth countries such as India, with its space programme: how many of your people, and those in neighbouring Commonwealth countries, need spectacles but don't have them?

Of course, spectacles aren't particularly expensive, especially for reading or other close tasks. No doubt the availability of opticians is critical. But the question of setting the right priorities remains.

I know there are some important preoccupations currently. But our International Give Away Secretary presumably isn't tied up with Brexit and Syria. Is the appropriately named Penny Mordaunt capable of sorting it out? Don't hold your breath.

3 comments:

  1. When working one of the many jobs I did was to collect old spectacles from civil servants and take them, very 6 months or so, to local opticians shops who participate in a charitable scheme to help those who would otherwise not have glasses in 3rd world countries.

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    1. We always donate our old specs for this scheme. But, while worthwhile, it seems it's not enough. A GP at one of our practices (some houses ago) used to go out to India every other year for 6 weeks to do cataract ops out in the field, literally in a tent. But they have a space programme....as I say, wrong priorities?

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  2. Agreed Phil our small contributions only go so far

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