Comic Relief - thoughts

Just been moved to a chin wobbling moment when I saw a young African Doctor having to decide which 3 of 4 babies to fit to a 3 port oxygen machine. 3 will live 1 will die.

Then I find myself hating Davina Macall as usual and fancying Miranda, what is going on, this show is screwing with my mind.

Anyone have any thoughts on TV charity extraganzas?

im in the same boat...

It has moved me to tears because I'm a big softy and day to day life makes you forget the problems in the third world..

I sat hear eating some bread I made as the little 3 year old cried that she hurt because she hadn't eaten in days..tore me apart.. I winge that I might have to cut my holiday shorter in france this year to save £50...ffs

we do not know how lucky we are..


PS. I hate Davina...

[jonny.boyd]

It is a rather bizarre layout tbh:

Comedy followed by very very sad video of children dying somehow followed by more comedy then another sad film... fair play to the presenters it must be hard doing the transitions between the two!

At said above, I am a culprit of forgetting just how luck I am to have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and food to eat. Saddens me to think of those who have nothing...

sad and i do feel for the people over there we are very lucky but i do wish there was more focus on birth control in Africa.
That's not meant in a thoughtless way but it does slightly annoy me.

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by irons

sad and i do feel for the people over there we are very lucky but i do wish there was more focus on birth control in Africa.
That's not meant in a thoughtless way but it does slightly annoy me.

Kind of agree with this.

At the moment its just a case of lets stop them dying in poverty as Midas so that they can die in poverty as adults in many cases.

Also agree about the format comments

Originally Posted by irons

sad and i do feel for the people over there we are very lucky but i do wish there was more focus on birth control in Africa.
That's not meant in a thoughtless way but it does slightly annoy me.

Been saying this for years tbh, they give birth on average to 6-8 children, there isn't the resource to support this amount of population explosion.

An Indian guy where I worked years ago said it was the same in India, he used to to do charity work going round the villages trying to get the birth control message across, he felt mostly it fell on deaf ears.

On a positive note, >£76m raised in a recession shows what a good nation we are, we should be proud

[pookie]

Not sure if that figure already includes the 10m the government already pledged on our behalf for the healthcare projects

http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/uk_na...elief/?ref=rss

[keith_d]

Using rollercoaster programming (big high, big low, big high....) is an effective way to get us to donate money. And £75 million sounds like a pretty decent pot of money given that these appeals usually exceed their forecast.

But I don't think we really appreciate the scale of the problem. There are a billion people in Africa (2005 estimate) and even in the richest country (South Africa) a quarter of the population are living on less than a pound a day. In the poorest (Malawi, Rwanda) it's three quarters of the population. We're looking at over half a billion people living every day on less than I spend for my lunchtime sandwich.

And the worst thing about all this, I don't know whether giving money to events like this is making things better or not. (yes, I bought the t-shirt, red nose and made a donation. I'm a sucker really!)

From a poor African's perspective they need all those children because there's no certainty how many will reach adulthood. And without adult offspring to support them, they will die in poverty when they can't work. Changing that cycle isn't just a matter of promoting birth control, you have to change the whole society. Better health care for children only works if you can convince the adults that they need less children, and I don't see any evidence of that happening.

What do other people think?

Keith.

[kaivalagi]

Totally agree Keith, birth control and child health care go hand in hand, otherwise if mortality rates are lowered a population will spiral out of control in a place where money and employment is extremely short in the first place...

It's easy for a charity to work on providing medical attention etc to help reduce the number of deaths where it's obviously needed without getting involved in the much more complicated issues in a society.

Once basic medical assistance is in place more needs to be spent on educational needs for those that get a chance to live so that they can better their nations in all aspects when they are adults. The countries need to be independent full stop.

[dizzyblonde]

How can they raise the most money ever this year. Call me cynical, but how can this be?

I donated via school, in the way of non uniform day, and buying cakes etc.

I was very uncomfortable watching the doctor, it was obviously choking him to make such a decision. Being someone whose child has been in SCBU with tubes hanging from noses and drips in feet, all contained in a plastic box...kinda pulls on the heartstrings really.
I aren't overly convinced that charity aid, does much good. These people need to be standing on their own feet, rather than relying on such charity. Its a very harsh comment to some, but its whats really needed.

Using money in a different direction, than 'hey a fiver buys a mosquito net, 25 can do this whole section of room'. Its ok to say that, but how many mosquito nets can you buy? Its a never ending piece of string, because theres tooooooo many people to provide them for. Yes, more children born, makes up for those that unfortunately die, infant mortality rate must be terrible...but we keep donating so more are saved. Its an absolute terrible viscous circle, and all because the adults are TBH a bit on the lazy side when it comes to sex education.
They need birth control measures, and if the adults can't take that in, then the children have no chance.