Health Charity (International)

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Published: 2009; Updated: 2011

We believe that developing-world health is an extremely promising area for a donor.

As the publication Millions Saved argues, there are many health programs that can be shown - fairly rigorously and convincingly - to have had a large impact on health outcomes, on a large scale (more discussion of this publication.) On an even broader scale, health aid is often credited with contributing to a dramatic decline in developing-world infant mortality since 1960.2 This contrasts with the areas of developing-world education and economic empowerment, which are associated with relatively few well-established and widely accepted cases of positive impact on life outcomes.

We have generally found that while rigorous impact studies are rare in the areas of education and economic empowerment, there are many medical interventions whose impact on life outcomes is strongly supported. For more information, see our full list of several of the most promising programs, with links to detailed writeups.

For more information see our developing-world health cause overviews:

Sources