Crisis mentality

We want to help. How could we not? The images - on television, on the front page, on our computer screens - are unbearable: villages smashed, bodies bloated and stiff, parents grieving over lost children.

And so we give. And we're not wrong to do so. The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia killed tens of thousands, and left hundreds of thousands homeless and in danger of succumbing to disease. They need our help.

But consider this: As a share of our economy, our contribution to poor countries in 2003 puts us last among 22 top donor countries. We gave 15 cents for every $100 of national income to poor countries. Denmark gave 84 cents - 84 cents! - Belgium gave 60 cents, France gave 41 cents, and Greece gave 21 cents (the lowest share besides our own).

And this: Each month, almost 140,000 people die because of diarrhea; 240,000 die of AIDS. Many of the dead are children. Their deaths are no less significant than those we have seen as a result of the tsunami, their families no less anguished.

The difference is that these "everyday" deaths are rarely covered by the media. The victims die individually, off camera. The cumulative worldwide toll of malaria, for example, fails to impress us here in the United States, because it's gradual and undramatic - at least in television terms.

On its Web site, the venerable aid group Doctors Without Borders/MÇdecins Sans Frontiäres (MSF) informs those seeking to make a donation that they have received "sufficient funds" for their emergency response in South Asia. They request that people continue to donate to their general Emergency Relief Fund.

Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who flew over the hardest hit areas and announced that he hadn't seen anything like it in all his years of combat, expressed concern that we might be "flooding all of these places and accounts with supplies that may not be needed, or financial assistance that may not be required yet.

"While we focus on the tsunami victims now," he said at a press conference, "and a few months ago it was the victims of the crisis in Darfur, let's not overlook the fact that there are people in need throughout the world, whether it's in the Congo, the Darfur region of the Sudan, or in Liberia or in Haiti, or now in the area hit by the tsunami."

The day will come when the survivors of the tsunami are no longer the latest victims of the most recent disaster. But they will still need our financial and practical help to rebuild their lives. We need to make sure that we don't move on to the next crisis and leave them in the dust.

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