Good. Australian. Mining Company.

THE TIMES LAUDS A CORPORATE ANTI-MALARIA CAMPAIGN.


If you thought the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the only private entity doing something about malaria, there's yesterday's New York Times Op-Ed page, which congratulated an Australian mining company, of all things, for participating in a large-scale malaria eradication program in southern Africa.

Basically, BHP Billiton has been helping Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland kill mosquitoes over a 40,000-plus square mile area, dropping the incidence of malaria by up to 96 percent in one district.

Selfish? You bet: BHP Billiton needs a healthy workforce to get the aluminum it sells, and its own less-intense malaria program wasn't doing the trick.

But the mineral-extraction biz isn't exactly notorious for its public-mindedness, so it's exceptional that BHP has found an intersection between profits (US$5.2 billion last year) and helping with a big job that's normally reserved for national governments.