• Question: If you could end one deadly disease once and for all, what would it be?

    Asked by haris108 to Anna, Chris, Jane, Iain, Nick on 7 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Jane Charlesworth

      Jane Charlesworth answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      This is a tough question! Worldwide, the biggest killers are HIV, diarrhea and tuberculosis. However I think I would pick malaria, because it’s been shown that giving people nets to keep mosquitoes out is a very easy and cheap way to stop them getting sick from malaria and people are trying to do some really cool things like breed mosquitoes that can’t spread the malaria parasite.

    • Photo: Anna Middleton

      Anna Middleton answered on 7 Mar 2014:

      @haris108 Great question. What is crazy to me is one of the biggest killers worldwide is childhood diarrhea from drinking dirty water. Just think – putting in clean water would stop one of the biggest killers! Why don’t we just sort that out? we should.

    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 8 Mar 2014:

      Great question, but a tough one!
      I like Jane and Anna’s answers. In Europe we tend to think of the diseases that are common here, like cancer and heart disease, but I think it would be amazing if we could eradicate malaria, HIV or other diseases that affect poor countries. These diseases are one of the greatest barriers to lifting countries out of poverty, and eradicating them would be a very important step in ending poverty, which if we could achieve that, would be one of the greatest achievements of humanity.

    • Photo: Chris Cole

      Chris Cole answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      I’m with Anna on this one.

      Disease is often a symptom of some other issue such as war, poor hygiene or malnutrition. If we address these things first we can improve the lives of millions of people in one go.

Comments