[Ip-health] MSF op-ed in Huffington Post: Profound Health Impact for Small Change

[James ARKINSTALL]

Message en plusieurs parties au format MIME
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, executive director of MSF's Access to
Essential Medicines Campaign, explains how ideas like a levy on
speculative financial transactions can be life-line in the fight for
improved global health. This is his first posting as a regular contributor
to the Huffington Post's Impact page.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tido-von-schoenangerer/profound-health-impact=
-fo_b_450167.html

Profound Health Impact for Small Change
Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer

Much of the discussion surrounding President Barack Obama's proposed fee
on financial institutions to help cut the U.S. deficit overlooks how
similar revenue-generating ideas could close the glaring gaps in the
global fight against several health emergencies.

Even though the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in efforts and
funds dedicated to global health programs -- governments and private
sources contributed upwards of $22 billion in 2007 -- huge shortfalls
exist.

Unprecedented efforts have given 4 million people living with HIV/AIDS
access to treatment, but 10 million more have been left behind. The lack
of maternal and childhood health services, including emergency obstetric
care and vaccinations against pneumonia and measles, desperately needs to
be addressed. Without better diagnostics and medicines, we cannot hope to
stem the tide against tuberculosis or the most neglected diseases like
Chagas, sleeping sickness, and kala azar.

The World Bank recently estimated that $12.5 billion is needed annually to
scale up effective nutrition programs globally, including therapeutic and
complementary feeding at the community level, for the millions of young
children cut down by the scourge of malnutrition. But as of 2008, only
$300 million was available -- less than 2.5 percent of the sum required to
meet the needs -- even though malnutrition claims between 3 to 5 million
children every year.

The World Health Organization predicts that none of the health-related
Millennium Development Goals that the international community had set
itself will be met by 2015. Clearly no less than a paradigm shift will do.

When I helped open a Doctors Without Borders AIDS treatment program in
Thailand in 2000, the landscape was bleak. The pandemic continued to
decimate communities throughout Asia and Africa, and there was little hope
on the horizon. Pharmaceutical monopoly power held medicines out of reach
at a cost of around $12,000 a year, political leaders and donors hid their
heads in the sand, refusing to expend political will and resources as the
death toll mounted.

Through the concerted efforts of activists, government officials,
international groups, and medical professionals, today Thailand has
near-universal access to treatment. Since then I have seen firsthand how
similar efforts, supported by the international community, in countries
across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe have brought back
the lives of people with HIV that already seemed lost.

But just when many of the hardest-hit countries are in the midst of
reaching more and more people with HIV, TB or malaria treatment and are
ready to similarly improve other health services, the interest of donors
is waning, even to the point of reneging on promises made only a few years
ago.

Barely four years after world leaders met at the 2006 United Nations
General Assembly and committed to universal access to HIV prevention,
treatment and care, political and funding support is retreating.
Stagnating funding levels for AIDS treatment, as the Obama administration
is proposing, or shrinking contributions like those planned by the
Netherlands and Germany would cruelly punish the success of previous years
and risk jeopardizing ongoing efforts.

This is why funding dedicated to global health efforts is so urgently
needed. Variations on Obama's fee on financial institutions like a
financial speculation tax or a foreign currency transaction tax have
already garnered the support of governments in Europe.

One idea is to levy as little as 0.005 percent on currency transactions
involving the world's most traded currencies. Traders would barely notice,
but the benefits would be enormous -- yielding $33 billion a year. We
already know such a system can work. Since 2006, UNITAID has raised nearly
$1 billion through a small tax on airline tickets in countries in the
developed and developing world to fund AIDS, TB and malaria treatment
programs around the world.

How to fully fund and implement effective health programs around the world
is not an academic exercise, but rather one of the most urgent moral
questions of our day. As a physician, I know all too well that there are
people behind these statistics, families whose children and loved ones'
lives depend on whether we are successful in addressing these crises. And
with revenue from innovative financing mechanisms like a tax on financial
or currency transactions, we may just have a fighting chance.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
James ARKINSTALL

Managing Editor
M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res - Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
www.msfaccess.org

+33 1 40 21 2837 (office)
+33 6 13 99 7751 (mobile)

Follow us on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/MSF_access
Join us on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/MSFaccess