Here's the gist of Bob Herbert's article...
Zimbabwe, once considered the breadbasket of Africa, is now a country that cannot feed its own people. The unemployment rate is higher than 80 percent. Malnutrition is widespread, as is fear.
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is the lowest in the world: 37 years for men and 34 for women. A cholera epidemic is raging. People have become ill with anthrax after eating the decaying flesh of animals that had died from the disease.
The collapse of Zimbabwe's health system in 2008 is unprecedented in scale and scope.
A Physicians for Human Rights report quoted the director of a mission hospital:
" A major problem is the loss of life and fetal wastage we are seeing with obstetric patients. They come so late, the fetuses are already dead. We see women with eclampsia who have been seizing for 12 hours. There is no intensive care unit here, and now there is no intensive care in Harare. If we had intensive care, we know it would be immediately full of critically ill patients. As it is, they just die. "
Parirenyatwa Hospital was closed four months into the cholera epidemic, arguably the worst of all possible times to have shut down public hospital access. The hospital's surgical wards are closed. A doctor described the heartbreaking dilemma of having children in his care who he knew would die without surgery. "I have no pain medication,"
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. The massive cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe exceeded the World Health Organization’
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On the other side of the world and with the collapse of record labels, I have developed a direct to consumer on-line Pop Music downloading sales model. I pledge to donate 50% of net proceeds of download sales from “The Autobiography of Mick Star” to Doctors Without Borders to assist humanitarian relief efforts in Zimbabwe.
* On-line sales of $0.99 at iTunes yielded a $0.70 pre-tax earning for a record label.
* The record labels, on average, returned $0.15 to the artist.
* On-line distributors like Tunecore work directly with the singer/songwriter or band and eliminates the need for a record label.
* MP3 files get uploaded directly to on-line outlets (iTunes) and profits comes directly to the artist at $0.70 not $0.15.
* By pledging 50% of net profit to Doctors Without Borders, artists like me can make a difference in Zimbabwe.
* If one artist embraces this on-line marketing model, it's an interesting story.
* If artists collaborate worldwide and embrace this on-line marketing model, Doctors Without Borders and their humanitarian efforts in Zimbabwe can succeed.
Help me to shift the paradigms of Pop Music marketing for the benefit of Doctors Without Borders. It is as easy as it seems.
Read Bob Herbert's article "Zimbabwe Is Dying" (New York Times 1-16-09) and if you're an singer/songwriter or band and you're not yet contractually bound to a record label, check out Tunecore.
Drop me an email at mickstar09@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts.
---Mick Star
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.tunecore.com
