Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Relief Is Not Enough -- Tsunami relief does not replace development

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Relief Is Not Enough -- Tsunami relief does not replace development: "The outpouring of emergency aid will be a great help to the ravaged countries, but disaster relief is an inadequate, expensive substitute for more timely improvements to their infrastructures. The most obvious example was that Indian Ocean nations lacked a tsunami-warning system like the one in the Pacific, but that omission may be forgivable. Tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean. Undersea sensors can cost a quarter of a million dollars apiece and have steep maintenance costs. India, Sri Lanka and the other wave-torn nations had far more urgent spending priorities. (In January a chastened India announced belatedly that it would invest $29 million on tsunami detectors after all.)
The real humanitarian fiasco is not the inadequate preparation of these nations, and many others, for freakish catastrophes. It is their inadequate preparation for the day-to-day horrors that routinely slaughter their populations. Millions of people die annually from malaria and AIDS--more than the equivalent of a tsunami a month. Lack of clean water in parts of Africa promotes disease and fuels civil conflicts. Poor countries face chronic crises so dire that the world's sensibilities have been numbed to them. "