What is the most pressing health scourge plaguing humanity? Is it AIDS? Mad Cow Disease? The flu?According to the head of the United Nations World Health Organization, Dr. Gro Harlem Bruntland, the answer is tobacco.Dr. Bruntland, a Norwegian, has headed the World Health Organization since 1998 and has been instrumental in bringing the battle against tobacco to the forefront of global health campaigns. She has pushed for a worldwide ban on tobacco advertising and has worked aggressively for heavy taxation on tobacco products throughout the world.Dr. Bruntland justified her position in a recent interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, “There is no other product on the market around the world that when used as it is intended will kill half of its users.” In her ensuing remarks, she continued to re-direct questions about AIDS, malaria and poverty back to the real problem: tobacco.While we can understand Dr. Bruntland’s quest to minimize the impact of tobacco on global health, the interview left me wondering whether or not the social justice issues surrounding global health crises were ignored. Why wage a war on a killer that only kills half its users? What about HIV/AIDS with its death sentence on anyone infected? What about environmental conditions that replicate the physiological harm caused by tobacco smoke? Was she concerned about the millions of people in industrializing nations who also developed asthma and cancer by proxy to unregulated smog-belching toxin-spewing factories? What about the 800 million chronically hungry people in the world? Do the nutritional concerns of nearly 15 percent of the world’s people compete with global tobacco use?The majority of the world’s population live in places where they don’t have a chance to develop lung or oral cancer as the result of tobacco use because more pervasive health problems kill them before they’re old enough to get cancer. Cancer is generally a symptom of a population and a health system that is advanced enough to sidestep malnutrition, typhoid, cholera or measles. A clean water supply, adequate food and shelter and childhood immunizations provide the luxury required to have a population that eventually develops lots of nasty tobacco related health problems.However, under the leadership of Dr. Bruntland, the World Health Organization seems to be zealously attacking a killer of the aged in developed countries while continuing to under-fund other programs. For example, tropical diseases kill about 5 million people annually, yet the WHO tropical diseases budget is about $24 million per year. That’s great. Less than five bucks a person for everyone dying from malaria or any other tropical parasite. That will purchase about two anti-malarial tablets, or better yet, half a mosquito net.In sub-Saharan Africa, it costs about $20 to provide basic childhood immunizations to children under the age of five. Let’s do the math on this. Someone is earning $2 daily picking tea and has six kids. Now, if they work every day, the tea doesn’t die off and they don’t get injured on the job, it will only take about two and a half months to earn enough to give their kids all the shots they need.No doubt the World Health Organization is faced with challenges in appropriating funds, offering education, conducting research and employing qualified staff. However, when the calculus they use to monetize human life leaves so many left out of the equation of basic sanitation, nutrition and health care, it is time to prioritize.Dr. Bruntland’s pet project, curbing global tobacco use, is certainly a noble cause. We have seen in our own nation the high costs of regulating tobacco and making industry concede on matters of taxation and advertising. To anyone wishing to take on the world industry: good luck.Meanwhile, the World Health Organization needs to collaborate with other Bretton-Woods organizations. The World Bank and the World Trade Organization can make money available for public health campaigns to extend aid beyond the WHO budget. Other U.N. organizations, such as the U.N. Environmental Program and the World Food Program could coordinate efforts to combat the health risks associated with the environment and malnutrition. The World Health Organization has proven its success in combating killers. The eradication of smallpox in the 1970s is a stellar example of how the global health community can unite to curb world health threats. I hope that the priorities of the head of the World Health Organization can balance her obvious passion to eradicate tobacco use with the world’s pressing need for basic health services.

Rachel Faber is a senior in agronomy from Emmetsburg.