The Globe and Mail: Focus on tsunami may sink other causes

The Globe and Mail: Focus on tsunami may sink other causes

From the article by Oliver Moore

"Our culture will tend to ignore the normal bad things until it becomes a very bad thing," Dr. Gingerich told globeandmail.com in a telephone interview Monday.

"We need to be reminded that there's something bigger -- don't get me wrong, the tsunami's huge -- but we need to be thinking about everything else."

But even though measles kill 600,000 people every year, diarrhea another 1.8 million and tuberculosis nearly two million, charities have learned the hard way that front-page news is often needed to break the public out of their lethargy.

"As many people died of AIDS since the tsunami as died in the tsunami," pointed out David Morley, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières. "But it's not a shock any more."