healthcare

Patients living in poverty in the Global South are being bankrupted by private healthcare corporations backed by multi-million-dollar investments from development finance institutions (DFIs) run by the UK, French, German and other rich country governments. DFIs like the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) invest public funds via the private sector to help foster economic development in the Global South and tackle poverty. However, Oxfam published two investigations on DFI funding into private hospital chains and other for-profit healthcare corporations operating in low- and middle-income countries and found cases of them.   

We, the undersigned, are calling for a stop to funding from Development Finance Institutions to private for-profit healthcare providers. Mounting evidence shows that this funding is going to expensive out-of-reach private hospitals and clinics in low- and middle-income countries that are widening healthcare inequalities, exacerbating poverty and gender-based discrimination and violating human rights. Far from advancing progress towards Universal Health Coverage as governments have committed, this form of development finance is undermining it. 
 

In response to World Health Organization (WHO) member states not reaching an agreement on a pandemic accord in time for the World Health Assembly this week, Oxfam International’s Health Policy Lead, Anna Marriott, said: “Negotiators have been working on drawing up a global treaty meant to prevent a repeat of the extreme vaccine apartheid between Global North and South during the COVID-19 pandemic. But time and time again in these negotiations, rich countries have danced to the tune of big pharmaceutical corporations instead of healing the deep geopolitical chasms caused by their short-sighed vaccine nationalism."

This report examines the support to private healthcare provision in India by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Despite supporting private healthcare in the country since 1997, no healthcare results for lending and investments have been disclosed since the start of these operations over twenty-five years ago.

Max Lawson, Oxfam International's Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: "The G7 had failed the Global South here in Hiroshima.  They failed to cancel debts, and they failed to find what is really required to end the huge increase in hunger worldwide. They can find untold billions to fight the war but can’t even provide half of what is needed by the UN for the most critical humanitarian crises."

An important International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiative to shore up poor people in the Global South from the worst effects of its own austerity measures and the global economic crisis is in tatters.

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. 

West African governments are planning to “slash and burn” their way out of COVID-19 induced economic loss, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) today. The organizations are calling for an urgent change of course as West African governments are preparing their annual budgets and participating in the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, which are crucial discussions to focus the recovery on fighting inequality and poverty.

Over 1,000 health professionals from 66 countries have signed a letter urging the G20 to cancel the debt of developing countries, ahead of tomorrow’s extraordinary G20 Finance Ministers meeting.

The coronavirus pandemic is leaving a trail of devastation in low-income countries. This briefing aims to shine a light on the debt owed to private creditors by five African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia. It outlines the steps which the G20 needs to take immediately to avert further economic chaos.