Fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventable, treatable diseases - AIDS, malaria, TB - for lack of drugs that we take for granted. This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold onto very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties, doubts our concerns, and questions our commitment to that whole cocept. Because if we're honest, there's no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth.
Bono - In the Foreword of The End of Poverty
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