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Just look at what a $1000 could achieve

Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.

As many people around the world ready themselves to celebrate Mothers Day, Singer raises an issue that ought to be seen as a significant blot on our societies, certainly to those in the West.

"Right now, mothers and their children in developing countries are dying because they can't get safe drinking water, immunisation against common diseases, or basic healthcare. It doesn't have to be like that. It would not be difficult for us to save them.

If you live in Australia and are middle class or above, you are almost certainly spending money on things you do not need. Maybe it is something big, like renovating your home, which is adequate but could be nicer. Maybe it is something small, like buying bottled water when safe water flows out of the tap.

Whatever it is, if you have more money than you require to satisfy your basic needs, then you have the ability to help. The cost of that bottle of water is more than the world's poor have to live on for an entire day.

You can help to stop these unnecessary deaths, and it doesn't cost all that much. Is it worth $1000 to you to save a child's life? Because that is a rough estimate of what it costs when you give to an effective organisation working to extend immunisation, safe water, or basic healthcare to the world's poorest people."

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"But more than 8 million children under five years old are dying unnecessarily every year. That's about 22,000 children every day. We should think of that as an emergency that takes precedence over things that are merely desirable, such as funding for the arts."



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