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If you wanted to compare two strikingly different things, try comparing an auditorium full of well-heeled, well-connected DC-ites sitting comfortably in the plush seats of the Sydney Harmon Opera house to a group of malnourished, poverty- stricken people of Sub-Saharan origin having giant parasitic worms being pulled from festering boils on their skin.

Quite a contrast, don’t you think?

Yet this was the dichotomy presented at a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation event that I attended as a VZ representative this past Tuesday. The event was a multi-media presentation entitled “Living Proof,” an awareness campaign that health care investments and initiatives in developing countries are working, and that there should be more.

 The presentation was more like a theater production, complete with auditorium style seating at an opera house, complex lighting sequences, projected stage back drop, and of course the stars themselves, Bill and Melinda Gates, who gave the presentation. There were video clips, photographs, moving charts, lighting gimmicks, dumb jokes, even a singing performance by an African a capella group “Vocal Motion” to complete the performance effect.

 While I don’t mean to disparage the importance and solemnity of the subject of health care in developing countries, nor pretend that I was not moved by the touching video clips and human stories presented that night, the high tech and “performancy” nature of the presentation was more distracting to me then impacting. Perhaps I’m the only one though, because I wasn’t expecting it. Perhaps the congressmen and the common, the former with power over funding, the latter with the power over public opinion, need high tech gimmicks in order to have a lasting impression, and therefore motivation to act. Perhaps with my theater production experience, I was distracted by the obvious tricks of the performance trade. I saw Bill and Melinda reading from prompters, I admired their tag-team performance, I wondered if it was worth it to pay for the travel, lodging and stipend of five African singers for a two minute performance. I couldn’t stop trying to calculate the budget for this production, er presentation, in my head.

 I did learn a lot from the presentation, but it registered to me as a show, not as a serious issue that needs government and popular support. Hopefully I was the only one who felt that way, because the issue of health care investment in developing nations is indeed critically important.

 I learned that diseases like smallpox and polio have been almost completely eradicated from the planet as a result of global health investment and initiatives. Child mortality has dropped by more than half since 1960. Vaccinations are the ultimate prevention tool, and more diseases can be eradicated through the development and distribution of vaccines. I learned that there is still a lot that needs to be done. For example, maternal and newborn health has not had any significant improvement in the past few decades, and 4 million newborns and .5 million mothers (during childbirth) still die every year.

There is no need for a song and dance routine to convince me of the importance of something, but perhaps it is necessary for others.