Let us see how this number is arrived at. Now add in the additional costs for greatly increased efforts to control AIDS, TB and the like. Even with the indirect expenses to the United States of debt cancellation, the sums are still quite small. A few billion dollars more could mount a similarly effective effort against tuberculosis and other deadly infectious diseases. Life expectancy on the continent is around 50 years and falling.
Malaria alone costs billions of dollars per year just in lost earnings and medical charges.
The cost is many times that when we consider the longer-term effects of the disease such as suppressing foreign investment and educational attainment in the region. Meanwhile, debt cancellation for Africa has come down to a matter of life and death. African leaders know very well that for their own countries to muster the internal resources to fight these dread diseases, they will have to be permitted by the creditor nations to shift the funds now spent on debt servicing into public health. The increased domestic resources would help get public health centers operating. The additional contributions from donor nations would be needed to procure vitally needed supplies such as insecticides, bed nets, anti-malarial medicines and the greatly expanded services of experts in fields such as entomology, immunology, parasitology and water resource management.