FRESH

Hacker News

$8800 house design helps prevent fatal diseases in African children

47 points by gmays

by idaseing

4 subcomments

Let’s replace the local materials and techniques used for generations with expensive, hideous concrete slabs and corrugated roofs designed in a month by outside builders with no experience of local conditions and no concern for how things fit in with the local environment or whether local people can afford them or build them, making them dependent on outside support, all for some dubious gains in mosquito protection that could be achieved just as well by adding some cheap screens to the existing houses. Groundbreaking.

by fwipsy

0 subcomment

Clicked because I want an $8800 house. The key part seems to be this line:
“But who is going to pay for these houses?” he asks. “The same donors who are currently failing to pay for adequate coverage with long-lasting insecticidal nets, costing about $1.20 per person-year of coverage?”
Put it that way, and even running the trial seems like a waste, because there's no way this was ever going to be cost-effective compared to nets. Perhaps it's meant to lead to more convenient housing techniques which could be applied with acceptable marginal cost; but if that's the case, why not just develop and test those cheaper techniques in the first place?

by forinti

1 subcomments

by mothballed

1 subcomments

```
   Moving some of the villages’ poorest people to the most upscale housing upset established hierarchies, and some of the lucky participants were initially treated as outcasts. Rumors began to circulate—for example that the homes contained a secret room one could enter but never leav
```
I would have offered it to some middle/upper class first so they would lead by example. You dont win people over by leading with the example of something being the mark of the low class. Not even the lower class want to willingly be associated with marks of the lower class. They want the things rich successful people are associated with; basic human psychology.

by GuestFAUniverse

0 subcomment

Concrete and steel facepalm
In that climate? What's next? Sell them the obsolete energy tech nobody wants at home?
"Research". Yeah. "Marketing via Freemium" fits better.

by aaron695

0 subcomment

by casey2

1 subcomments

We don't need a house right now, we need food, scrap it and sell it.
Some years later: Alright now that food security has improved lets buy a house. Sorry most construction companies got put out of business by Humanitarian Builder Inc. and they just closed shop cos funding ran out. Contractors aren't building permanent businesses.

by pfannkuchen

3 subcomments

Is anyone else starting to wonder whether somebody is intentionally raising an army for some future purpose in Africa?
Like the thing preventing “development” in Africa isn’t that too many of their children die early. Or, if it is, can someone enlighten me? I don’t understand how that is the problem with “development” occurring there.