He lit one little candle

In what often seems like a cruel place, every so often something good happens. This is the case for the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation. It was started by Jeff Busch in 1999. He was working in Africa, saw the devastation wreaked by AIDS and recognized that a lot of the problem arose from blood transfusions. Blood donors were not being screened and blood was not being tested before being transmitted; as a result infected blood was being passed from one to another.

His foundation trains people to screen donors and test blood. A fairly simple idea, but the results have been so good (e.g., the amount of blood suitable for transfusions in Botswana has increased by 80% in one year) that China, Brazil and India want to set up similar operations.

We frequently castigate “big business’, but the foundation gets 70% of its funding from business. Companies such as Exxon Mobile, Merck, Johnson & Johnson have contributed. And the Gates Foundation is involved here as well as US AID and the World Bank.