PHM Media coverage in the Associated Press
15th May, 2002
People's Health Movement media coverage during WHA 2002 (May 2002)
By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - By spending just 1 cent in every dlrs 10 of their wealth on health aid, rich countries could save millions of lives each year in
poor nations - and boost economic development - Harvard University economist Jeffrey Sachs said Wednesday.
"It's the best investment available in the world bar none," said Sachs, who is in Geneva for the annual meeting of the decision-making
body of the 191-nation World Health Organization (news - web sites).
"Health is essential for economic development - without it you can't achieve economic progress," he told reporters.
Sachs led a WHO commission which last year calculated that spending dlrs 66 billion per year on health in developing countries
would save around 8 million lives a year by preventing or treating diseases like AIDS (news - web sites), malaria and tuberculosis.
The commission said the investment also could generate economic benefits of dlrs 360 billion per year by 2020 by keeping workers
healthy and reducing the need to fight disease in the future.
Some campaigners, however, have criticized Sachs' approach, claiming he looked too closely at the purely economic benefits of
health investment and failed to listen to health policy-makers from poor countries.
"Health can't be seen as simply creating more productivity," said Mike Rowson of the British-based medical group MEDACT at a separate
news conference. "Otherwise the only investment will be in health for working-age adults, not the old, the disabled or the mentally ill."
Realizing that government intervention alone is not enough, the United Nations (news - web sites) has increasingly fostered the
involvement of private corporations and foundations such as the one run by computer tycoon Bill Gates (news - web sites) and his wife Melinda.
Most major WHO campaigns against high profile diseases involve alliances with private companies.
Campaigners have alleged such partnerships raise the risk of conflicts of interest, particularly when pharmaceutical manufacturers
are involved. Indian health activist Ravi Narayan said there was a danger of focussing on "magic bullets," when the real need was to
tackle poverty, a major cause of ill-health in developing countries.
But Sachs said initiatives like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which brings together business and
governments, showed the international community was getting serious about health in developing countries, which are the hardest hit by such
diseases.
"We're still nowhere near where we need to be, but the tide has turned," he said.
"But I'm going to keep on saying the same thing. This can't be done without more help from rich countries."
So far, donors have pledged just over dlrs 2 billion to the fund, launched last year, including dlrs 500 million from the United States.
The pledges fall far short of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s appeal for at least dlrs 7 billion annually.
