NEWSBYERIC GREEN

Last week my Google Reader account was bombarded by posts about a guy named Jason, his idea to help the “people of Africa” with donated t-shirts and a steady stream of corresponding outrage from aid professionals and observers. Here is the go-to link for all things shirt-gate.

Here is my 140-character summary:

No shirts in Africa? Idea: Send 1M tees. Instant web of rejection. Anti-hatorade video reply posted. Roundtable convened. Rethink.

What did I learn from this back-and-forth? First, many Africans do already have shirts (thanks, blogosphere!). Second, in-kind donations of items like shirts and shoes from far away lands do not make for good humanitarian aid. We were reminded of this after the earthquake in Haiti.

A weekend re-branding suggests that the folks at 1millionshirts.org may have learned a few things as well. Most significantly, the site no longer refers to the “people of Africa.” The goal, however, is still 1 million shirts raised. Why 1 million shirts? Jason and colleagues admit that the answer is not clear yet, but commit to use t-shirts “as the vehicle to help sustainable efforts in specific areas that the charities we choose to work with are involved in.”

In their defense, you don’t have too many options after you pay $1.99 for the domain name 1millionshirts.org, right?

There is a big push these days to open up information. Open Government. Open Data. Open Access. Open Source. And now, open global health and development.

In January 2010, PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, published a commitment from eight major global health agencies to improve health data throughout its life cycle — from collection to access to use. Now, the World Bank is keeping its promise to improve access to data.

On Tuesday, the Bank launched www.data.worldbank.org, a new platform for sharing global health and development data. For the first time, data lovers worldwide have free access to a robust Data Catalog of more than 2,000 indicators from various sources. The interface is clean and easy to use. There is even an API (Application Programming Interface) for developers! This means that people will be able to extend this great service in ways the World Bank may not have envisioned.

That is the way to share.

Increasing access to raw data will change the way we learn about the world. But don't take it from me. I did not invent the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee did. Go ahead and check out the clip below. Inspired? Good. Now here are a few key resources for global health and development data:

When the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, the urban slum population was 767 million. Today, it's estimated that this figure has increased in absolute terms to 828 million in the last decade. My laptop calculator tells me this is 61 million additional slum dwellers.

In other news, the Millennium Development slum target has been achieved. Exceeded, actually, 10 years ahead of schedule.

Did I lose you with that one?

The United Nations Human Settlement Program, UN-HABITAT, released its newest State of the World’s Cities report at the fifth session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro in March, which I was fortunate to attend. This report contains an honest assessment of the progress in reducing the urban divide: the Millennium target was exceeded by at least 2.2 times, 10 years ahead of schedule. Yet existing efforts “are neither satisfactory nor adequate.” That's honest, but it's a little confusing. Going twice the distance in half the time is generally a good thing, right?

What do you get when you ask 25 leaders to come up with a 15-year strategic plan for the U.S. on global health?

New ideas for bureaucracy! Well, that plus a number of other thought-provoking recommendations. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) asked a broad set of leaders for their best ideas on "smart" U.S. global health policy. Chaired by Retired Navy Admiral William J. Fallon and Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE (also a contributor to Change.org), CSIS's Commission released its final report yesterday.

Here are four points from it to consider:

1. Global health is smart power. "Smart power" is the Goldilocks of contemporary thinking on American power -- not too hard, not too soft. Just the right balance of strength and charm. This report positions global health as a key component of American charm and power. As its authors write, Americans understand that "promoting global health advances our basic humanitarian values in saving and enhancing lives." What's more, backing global health also helps in "bolstering U.S. national security and building constructive new partnerships."

Good for us and good for them, or so thinking goes. But not everyone agrees. Bill Easterly gives the "3D approach" -- the idea that development, defense, and diplomacy go hand-in-hand -- the grand prize for "worst in aid." To him and other critics, such an approach can skew spending decisions toward countries of strategic and military importance. Just see this pie chart, which wins a grand prize of a different sort.

2. Global health is a matter of national security. In a gross understatement, the report's authors admit that discussions about improved government coordination and efficiency "rarely excite or inspire the media or the public." But while their discussion of organizational reform isn't "exciting" or "inspiring" -- not by the terms' conventional meanings, anyway -- it's still informative. And if implemented, their recommendations will result in a bold shift in the U.S. approach to global health.

...to mosquitoes. That's the finding of a new study that helps explain why mosquitoes seem more attracted to some people than others. Researchers -- who focused on a malaria-endemic area of Burkina Faso -- found that volunteers who drank the local brew were more attractive to mosquitoes than volunteers who only drank water.

This study's goal was to understand how diet, beer in particular, impacts how attractive humans are to malaria's primary vector in Africa, Anopheles gambiae Giles sensu stricto -- or An. gambiae (or mosquito) for short. Diet is thought to be an important part of body odor, which has been shown to provide the female An. gambiae with an olfactory trail to human hosts. Therefore, diet may be an important factor behind variation in human attractiveness to mosquitoes -- and possibly malaria risk.

To test this idea, the study's authors randomly assigned 43 adult males to drink either beer or water. Participants in the beer group drank a local brew called dolo, a homemade concoction of fermented sorghum (reported to be the most widely consumed alcoholic beverage in Burkina Faso). The rest of the volunteers consumed a tall glass of tap water.

So far, so good. But how do you measure "human attractiveness" in the eyes or -- more accurately, the nose -- of a mosquito? (In other news, scientists have successfully transplanted mosquito 'noses' to frog eggs and fruit flies to study what odors set off mosquito olfactory receptors.)

We know that poor girls in developing countries often lack access to sanitary napkins. But does a lack of pads actually make it more likely that girls will drop out of school?

That's the case that Sheryl WuDunn and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof make, in an essay adapted from their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. As they write, “For fear of embarrassing leaks and stains, girls sometimes stay home during their periods, and the absenteeism puts them behind and eventually leads them to drop out.”

Sounds logical. And certainly, the argument has caught on. A few weeks ago, the New York Times featured the good work of Huru International, makers of reusable sanitary napkins. This organization is doing something great by providing young women (mostly in Kenya) with kits that include terry cloth sanitary pads, underwear, soap and educational materials. To top it off, the drawstring bag that holds these supplies can also be used as a backpack.

This is a good idea. Period (no pun intended).

But do pads actually reduce absenteeism among young women? The case isn't quite so clear.