2,102,400 CHILDREN DEAD EACH YEAR

Parade magazine--yes, I know--reports that a child dies every 15 seconds from drinking contaminated water. My abacus tells me that's 2,102,400 per year. That's a staggering figure. It's clear that most of these deaths occur in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, the areas, as the article reports, with the most contaminated water.

Developing countries. And what is the source of most of the ills of developing countries?

Oh, take your pick: historical and current western political and economic imperialism; usurping of power in many of these countries by tyrants whose lust for power trumps any concern for the well being of the citizenry and the economies that sustain standards of living; support of these tyrants as proxies by developed countries; drought; racism; the continual emasculating by conservative power of international bodies that could help, like the UN; and bad luck. None but the last can be considered alone, as most are interconnected.

Take food. Please. It's pretty well known that there is plenty of food around to feed all the hungry of the world. The problem is getting the food to them. Food, and the means of distribution, are often used as pawns by warlords and tyrants. Economic policies of developed countries also contribute to poverty and starvation. Many peoples export their crops for meager returns, thanks to free trade. Similarly many turn to export crops like cotton, tobacco, or coca, rather than food for their own country or region's use.

This is all remedial, but there appears to be no international will to end these practices and policies. The World Bank and the IMF (maybe not quite as evil as the Papacy, but close enough) until very recently were hugely responsible for much of this misery in the developing world. It's only the obvious extent of their calumny and the consistent pressure from anti-globalization forces around the world that have prompted even a modicum of reform in these agencies.

It's rare that one sees good news for these parts of the world, and even then they are underreported in favor of bombast and death. But it does happen: The success of mini-loans (even a few dollars in some cases) that offers people opportunities for sustainable enterpreneurial efforts--an incredibly successful program that is finally being supported by western capitalism; the development of simple and incredibly cheap solar cookers that were in fact widely reported a few years ago (but about which little has been seen lately).

Now, that Parade article reports the discovery by a Swiss researcher that leaving a clear plastic bottle of water in bright sun for six hours killed the pathogens that cause diarrhea. The combination of UVA light and heat does those little buggers in.

What a discovery! Millions of lives can be saved at almost no cost, gobs of misery eliminated.

How many clear plastic one or two-gallon water jugs are discarded or recycled every day in America alone?

So wouldn't a simple and terrific answer be for some international agency to create a program whereby these bottles are gathered up, cleaned, and given to people in sunny climes all over the world who suffer from contaminated water?

Sure. And the Red Sox will win the World Series.

And now the irony. Of course many of these same areas that suffer from diarrheal death also suffer from lack of food, and starvation kills many kids as well. I have to wonder how many of the lives saved with pure water would in turn die from starvation.

And for the rest of us, life goes on.