Posted on: Sunday, December 23, 2001

Editorial
Third World health needs must be served by all

One of the most fertile breeding grounds for the terrorism that now threatens the United States is the resentment felt in many Third-World areas over American wealth and power.

When that resentment boils over into overt terrorism, the United States has no choice but to fight back. But that cannot be our only response to the ugly fallout created by the gap between rich and poor. It is crucial that the United States and other First World economies do more to lift up the poorest.

Toward that end, the World Health Organization has released a plan that calls on rich nations to put more than a trillion dollars into health programs in the Third World. The plan, if fully implemented, could save more than 11 million lives by 2015, the U.N. organization said.

To date, the United States has failed to play much of a role in this area, spending only about 0.1 percent of its GNP on such programs.

Increasing our aid is far more than an act of generosity, although that should be enough. It is also a matter of self-interest. Reducing death, disease and poverty in the Third World is the best thing we can do to insure our own security.