Innovative Financing: Changing the Relationship Between the Rich and the Poor

Very soon, people who fly will have a chance to help the world's some of the most unfortunate inhabitants. Flyers, when purchasing airline tickets either on the websites of airlines or through travel agents, will be asked to make a direct contribution to the fight against the world's three deadliest epidemics: HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. This is part of a movement called innovative financing, which is a new kind of aid-tool that could fundamentally change the relationship between the rich and the poor throughout the world, a few dollars at a time.

Each of these diseases – HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis – still causes more deaths in developing countries than any other single disease, according to the World Health Organization. In 2004, the last year for which statistics were available, together these three diseases caused one in eight deaths in low-income countries.

So, the whole point is to help such poor people the next time you fly. Trust me; changing the so-called “third world” in this way is cheaper than changing such world by bombing them! The logic is very simple: when people have lots to lose, they think multiple times before losing such things. Let’s help people in getting a real life, and they will think hundreds of times before even planning to give it up! Please raise the costs of “switching” – in a business jargon, for people who understand only business!