Today Chevron announced it has expanded its partnership with Texas Children’s Hospital in order to expand the hospital’s Global Health Corps. The program which provides medical care to thousands of seriously ill children in Africa, trains local health workers and conducts clinical research. Chevron’s contribution of $6 million over five years will support an additional 10 American physicians working in Africa per year.
Rationale for the program from both a international humanitarian and domestic perspective were outlined in an editorial in the Houston Chronicle written by Dr Mark Kline of the the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative which oversees the Corps,
The clinics, training programs and partnerships we have built throughout sub-Saharan Africa provide the infrastructure and capacity to [now] tackle a multitude of other serious and life-threatening diseases that include malaria, tuberculosis and noncommunicable diseases like sickle cell disease and cancer.
But you may be wondering what all of these problems that are so far away have to do with those of us here in Houston.
From an ethical perspective, it can easily be argued that we have a duty to help alleviate needless human suffering wherever and whenever we can. But there is more to it than that. While we often associate global health concerns with places and people far away, we know all too well that there can easily be direct, domestic effects as a result of poor health abroad. Americans witnessed this first hand during the SARS epidemic of 2002 and the swine flu epidemic of 2009. Those two outbreaks proved to be very real reminders of how quickly the world can seem to shrink when an epidemic virus arises on the other side of the globe…
There are [also] enormous economic implications for nations that cannot afford to treat their sick, as well as for those who hope to partner with them. When trade opens up between developing and developed countries, wealth can expand in both directions and enrich all participants. Opportunities for trade and economic prosperity are stymied by poor health and poor health care. (Source)
In making the donor announcement on Chevron‘s behalf, Ali Moshiri, President of Africa and Latin America Exploration & Production added that “through the partnership with Texas Children’s Global Health Corps, we have the opportunity to train doctors, create infrastructure and build health systems. I firmly believe that the work we do now is changing the future, which should give all of us something to smile about.”