Choose your own priorities on our interactive table

Issues: conflict l global warming l disease l hunger l terrorism

The Challenge

Life expectancy is decreasing in some parts of the world. Ten million children will die this year in poor nations. This figure would be just one million if child mortality rates were the same as in rich countries.

An introduction to the Copenhagen Consensus

Economists battle it out to rank possible solutions for the great challenges in global stability and security

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• Make your own rankings on our interactive table

BACKGROUND

• Copenhagen Consensus: conflict

• Copenhagen Consensus: disease

• Copenhagen Consensus: global warming

• Copenhagen Consensus: hunger

• Copenhagen Consensus: terrorism

The hurdle is not just poverty, — some poor nations have reasonably good health conditions — but getting cheap treatment and prevention methods to the Third World.

Some health problems receive a lot of publicity. But in areas that we hear less about, we could invest wisely to make a big difference

Option One: Tackling Malaria

In poor countries, malaria will claim more than one million lives this year - most of them among children under 5.

Measures to reduce its transmission are simple. We need to expand the coverage of insecticide-treated bed nets. We need to get more preventive treatment to pregnant women so they don’t transmit malaria to their children. And we need to ensure there is more indoor spraying with the much-maligned pesticide DDT.

Treating malaria is becoming harder than it was because of growing resistance of the malaria parasite to the cheapest, most common anti-malarial drugs. Some poor nations cannot afford the new artimisinin combination therapies that work best, and need financial support.

The numbers

It makes sense to combine prevention options like bed-nets with subsidies on the new treatments for poor nations. Spending $500 million would save 500,000 lives a year - most of them children.

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