- Donors can have large impact -- saving a life for less than $1,000 -- when giving to an international health charity1
- Some programs have strong track records of success (such as bed nets for malaria and vaccines for children); others have often failed to achieve strong results (such as water programs)
- Our top charity recommendations are in the field of international health: VillageReach and the Stop TB Partnership
We believe that developing-world health is an extremely promising area for a donor.
As the publication Millions Saved argues, there are many health programs that can be shown - fairly rigorously and convincingly - to have had a large impact on health outcomes, on a large scale. (More discussion of this publication here.) On an even broader scale, health aid is often credited with contributing to a dramatic decline in developing-world infant mortality since 1960.2 This contrasts with the areas of developing-world education (discussed here) and economic empowerment (discussed here), which are associated with relatively few well-established and widely accepted cases of positive impact on life outcomes.
In addition, the Copenhagen Consensus - a major project aiming to identify the promising areas for philanthropy - gives over half of its recommendations (and four of the top five) to developing-world health interventions.3
We have generally found that while rigorous impact studies are rare in the areas of education and economic empowerment, there are many medical interventions whose impact on life outcomes is beyond dispute. For more information, see our full list of several of the most promising programs, with links to detailed writeups.
For more information see our developing-world health cause overviews:
Sources
- Easterly, Willam. 2008. "Can the West Save Africa?". NBER Working Paper 14363. Available online at http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/can%20the%20west%20sa..., accessed 7/1/09.
- Gates, Bill. Annual Letter. 2009. Available online at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/Pages/2009-preventing-child..., accessed 7/1/09.
- 1.
See http://www.givewell.net/recommended-charities#WhatdoyougetforyourdollarA...
- 2.
See, for example:
- Easterly 2008, Pgs 53-55.
- Bill Gates's annual letter, on behalf of the Gates Foundation 2009
- 3.
http://copenhagenconsensus.com/Home.aspx, accessed 6/30/09
