PARCELING OUT THE PROFITS

USA for Africa has a choice it’s making. It’s saving children’s lives. It’s true it’ll make a better day, but not until next week. . . .

USA for Africa’s recently concluded safari into East Africa is not producing any dramatic immediate results, beyond its announced plan to make a documentary movie of the trip.

The USA for Africa medical task force and advisory board meet this week to decide how to parcel out profits from the various “We Are the World” enterprises, now totalling about $47 million.

Their recommendations will go to the full board of directors--which include Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers. But this group won’t make any final decision until the following week, according to Marty Rogol, executive director of the USA for Africa Foundation.

The foundation has been criticized for not spending its money more quickly to save the thousands dying each week in sub-Saharan Africa. Even following its high-profile, high-tech trek into Ethiopia and the Sudan, the organization’s hierarchy continues to give its oft-quoted defense for being frugal: “We’re not interested in just putting a band aid over a serious wound.” It’s a quote USA for Africa president Ken Kragen seems to repeat by rote to any reporter who puts a microphone in front of him.

One immediate medical request made of USA for Africa’s delegation during its June trip to East Africa will be filled this week. An emergency shipment of 70,000 units of anti-diaherrial nutrient (trade name: Ringer’s lactate) is being purchased in Europe and flown to the Sudan to battle recent outbreaks of dysentary and cholera, according to Rogol.

Otherwise, requests ranging from U.N. pleas for fleets of Land Rovers to a demand for a $500,000 joint bank account made by the city fathers of Nyala, Sudan, are all going to have to wait until next week’s board meeting.