Meet Ben

Meet Ben Palafox. I'm typing this post on the couch in his living room, which Ben has generously offered me for my two nights in London. Ben lives in a modest yet incredibly tasteful part of town (a few blocks down the way is Kate Moss's flat, so I'm told).

Ben and I originally met just under two years ago, in Moncton, when we were both participating in the federal french language bursary program. Based on our proficiency tests, we were sorted into one of five levels; Ben was Niveau Cinq, while I was in Niveau Trois. One day during the program, we were working on French versions of our resumés. This was towards the end of the program, but I managed to snag a glance at Ben's; I remember thinking that it was one of the most impressive resumés I had ever seen. I cannot recall its specifics, except for my thought that the words "fellowship" and "founder" appeared with fantastic regularity for someone in their 20s. He obtained an MSc. PH - DC from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (which, he translates, is like a Master's in Public Health but with a specialization in Developing Countries).

Despite all this, Ben remains an incredibly humble guy. He dresses more like a musician or an artist than he does an academic, though he manages to do this without any pretension or appearance of effort. Today, like most days, he went to work in jeans, a plain white t-shirt and a vintage cardigan. It's worth noting that at our just-for-fun awards ceremony at the end of the French immersion program, he was a finalist in the "Best Dressed" category. It helps that he's a handsome, fresh-faced guy (who, by the way, is incapable of growing facial hair - when we stopped at a convenience store so I could pick up a razor, he marveled at the high price, since he has never had to purchase one).

I'm going to make a bold claim: Ben's job is one of the most important jobs in the world. I'm going to attempt to convey my very superficial understanding of his work.

As anyone who has done a significant amount of international traveling is aware, malaria is an enormous problem. The UN estimates between 1-3 million people are killed by malaria each year, with the vast majority of those deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. To exacerbate the issue (as if it needed exacerbating), many strains of malaria have become resistant to the oldest (which in many cases is synonymous with "cheapest" and "most widely available") drug treatments. Part of the issue is that, unlike some other infectious diseases, the distribution of prophylactic antimalarial meds can be handled in a largely impersonal way - very little contact needs to be made with a doctor. Therefore, drug-resistant malarial strains are often poorly understood by the local population, resulting in expenditures on pharmaceuticals that may offer little to zero protection against infection. So, not only are they taking ineffective medications, but they are keeping these inferior medications in the market.

A new initiative that you probably haven't heard of yet (but will undoubtedly over the next little while) involves massive subsidies aimed at lowering the price of the newer (more expensive) effective medications, to the point where their prices are on par with the older drugs. The theory is that the older drugs will be phased out of the market, and therefore the effective drugs will have to come down in price (thereby obviating the need for a subsidy). However, this theory has never been put to practice on a scale quite as large as this one. Billions of dollars will be spent on this initiative - it's basically the biggest public health experiment the world has ever seen.

So, Ben will also be traveling to Africa this summer. He'll be in Nigeria, researching the distribution and supply chains for antimalarial medications. He'll then pare this massive amount of data into concise reports, which in turn will be used to supplement Nigeria's funding applications to the Global Fund. To produce these reports, Ben requires an understanding of the epidemiological, pharmacological, economic, and legal issues related to these chains. His team of five are basically the only people in the entire world who understand these issues on a holistic level.

In summary: Ben Palafox is the man (and he also has a ridiculously comfortable couch).

Tomorrow: Landing in Accra!