For the price of the Iraq War, we could have saved five trillion children from dying of pneumonia.
Pneumonia, a lung infection that can be caused by a variety of microorganisms, is responsible for 19 percent of the deaths of children worldwide. It can be treated with a dose of antibiotic syrup costing 58 cents. Treating 5 trillion children for pneumonia would cost $2.9 trillion, which is $100 billion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.
