Baltimore, Maryland, United States …. [Wendi Rogers/ANN]
How does one define poverty? Does it exist in Western countries, such as the United States? This is just one of the issues that Dr. Gilbert Burnham, a prominent researcher, professor, and the director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, researches. The center, which began in 1998, looks at the health system of particular countries — assesses how those systems have been damaged, and how non-governmental organizations have responded.
With his extensive travel, how does Dr. Burnham see poverty faring in the world? “I think the [United Nations’] Millennium Development Goals are a good start to try to set up some priorities … When we consider that in the United States we’re looking at children being born now with a life expectancy of 100 years, whereas in many parts of world, life expectancy is less than 40 years, shows there’s an increasing gap between rich countries and poor countries.”
This affects the Adventist Church, says Dr. Burnham, a member of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland, because within the church, the bulk of membership is in developing countries. “This is where I think the church has really not fully tapped its capacity to strengthen the lives and the livelihoods of people in their various communities. Because when it comes down to it, although there are national policies, national programs and so forth, much of what is done to improve life is done at a community level. This is where the church has great capacity through community-based organizations … and I don’t think that has been fully utilized.”
He adds, however, that the “church can be proud of the work that ADRA [Adventist Development and Relief Agency] has done.”
Dr. Burnham, who was recently appointed as an assistant director in the Adventist world church’s Health Ministries department, calls defining poverty a “tricky business.” The World Bank defines poverty levels in developing countries as living on less than US$2 a day, Dr. Burnham explains. “If you’re living with less than [US]$1 a day, you’re living in severe poverty. If we use those criteria, look at Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank where 60 percent is in the poverty zone.”
How about the United States, a country where some find it hard to imagine pockets of poverty? “It becomes a bit more difficult. We try to establish a minimum basket that supports survival. I think Hurricane Katrina very clearly exposed deep pockets of poverty in this country. In the last few months there’s been about 3 million more Americans added to the list of people living in poverty than before. So on one hand we have capital incomes rising, especially in upper income groups, and we have people at the bottom who are clearly doing worse than they were 10 or 15 years ago.”
The health of a population and the overall requirement for assistance probably depends more on the disparities of population (the gap between rich and poor), he says, than it does on absolute amounts.
With all the bad news Dr. Burnham sees around him, does there seem to be any hope? “There’s a lot of potential good news as well,” he says. For example, “We have much more effective ways to control malaria … we have tools, expertise, proven experience. We have seen these work dramatically … we know what can reduce child deaths.”
His team is not looking for some “magic bullet,” he explains, but the work being done is bringing about positive change. The problem is not a lack of tools to do things, but not having resources or people to do them, he adds.
His work has taken him all over the world, looking for various ways to cope with emergency situations, famine, lack of education and the effects of war. His team has published reports on their findings, such as the recent one on civilian deaths among Iraqis.
They “found an excess mortality” rate, he says, noting that his interest in health systems causes him to look at how accessible treatment and medicines are to a particular population.
“We’re not surprised we saw so many civilian deaths,” he explains. “Deaths among civilians has been steadily increasing. At the Battle of Gettysburg, there was one civilian death. By the time we got to the First World War, probably 10 percent of deaths were civilians. By the time of the Second World War … we’re looking at 40 percent of deaths among civilians. By the end of the 20th century we were up to probably easily 90 percent of deaths among civilians.” At the end of the Iraqi conflict, he believes they’ll find the number is well over 90 percent.
“We’re not an NGO, so we don’t provide tents and blankets,” Dr. Burnham explains. “We’re not a donor, since we don’t have a lot of money ourselves.” But, we “work with various organizations to try to strengthen their programs, help them document things, to look at key research issues.
“Underneath all these [health crises] in developing or least developed countries is the issue of education. If we could promote education, if we could ensure that people have at least a primary education, we would change these numbers very dramatically,” he says, speaking of the high death rates in some places of the world.
Dr. Burnham says if he could pick just one thing he would change in the world, “it would be clear what that is, and that’s education of women.”
Dr. Burnham explains that his faith helps him along in his search for change. “Of course, there are a lot of things to be discouraged about. Even things that work well, for various reasons one can’t implement them as fully as one would like … but I think one of the principles of being a Christian is you have to believe that people can be transformed. Ways can be changed, lives can be changed, people can change directions. We’ve seen that over and over again.”
He adds, “I think Christians approach these kinds of development issues in a very optimistic way because we know people can change.”
Copyright (c) 2006 by Adventist News Network.
