Lack of funding undercuts opportunities to overcome global healththreats

New York, NY - MSF—GHN - Money management is the heart and soul of helping the malnourished, undereducated and those needing medical care, and the world can help with a simply levy of as little as .005 percent on transactions on four most traded currencies.

World

leaders assessing progress of the United Nations Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) in New York this week could transform the fight against two
of the leading causes of childhood deaths—malnutrition and HIV/AIDS—by
implementing an innovative funding mechanism for global health, the
international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without
Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said last week.


The World Health Organization reports that an additional $37 billion
needs to be spent on global health every year by 2015 in order to meet
the health-related MDGs. The intergovernmental Leading Group recently
estimated that a financial transaction tax could generate an estimated $33 billion a year to help in the fight against world diseases, hunger, humanitarian assistance
and HIV/AIDS.  That amount is only .005 on trades of the four major world currencies.


“For many diseases, we know what we need to do to save lives,” said
Sophie Delaunay, executive director of MSF in the U.S. “Our field teams
are using new tools and approaches to release children from the deadly
grip of malnutrition and to ensure children are born free of HIV, but
there is not enough funding for long-term, widespread implementation of
effective health interventions. A financial levy for health, by
providing a dedicated and predictable funding stream, could mean that
patients’ lives are no longer at the mercy of volatile markets and
political agendas.”


The political response to recent global financial volatility has had a
catastrophic effect on the reliability of funding and foreign aid
commitments for global health issues. This has left considerable gaps in
the financing of key institutions such as the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, TB, and Malaria, as some donor governments such as the United
States, Germany, Italy and Spain, renege on previous commitments or
stagnate or decrease their funding.


In Malawi, the government has submitted a Global Fund application for
funding to provide lifelong antiretroviral treatment to all pregnant HIV
positive women. This would dramatically reduce the transmission of HIV
from pregnant women to their children. But given the Global Fund’s
constrained budget and the pessimistic predictions around future
contributions from donor nations, there is a risk that Malawi will not
receive this grant and will not be able to fully implement a program
that could greatly reduce the number of children born with HIV. Some
countries have already been forced to implement 10 percent “efficiency
cuts” to funds approved in the last round of grants


“It is no longer enough to reiterate a commitment to access to care and
treatment – to maternal and child health, to the global AIDS fight,
“said Delaunay. “Unless alternative funding models are put in place to
guarantee long-term and sufficient funding, countries will continue to
be limited and these stated commitments will be nothing but rhetoric.”


The lack of sustainable global health funding also undercuts the
potential to expand the implementation of highly effective programs to
prevent childhood malnutrition, a condition that contributes to the
deaths of between 3.5 and 5 million children under five years of age
every year. MSF has demonstrated how new treatment tools and approaches
make it possible to not only cure, but also to prevent malnutrition for
hundreds of thousands of children in the world’s malnutrition
“hotspots.” For example, working alongside local organizations in Niger,
MSF has treated 77,000 severely malnourished children so far this year.
Since July, MSF has also been distributing food supplements to more
than 143,000 young children to prevent them from becoming malnourished.


Efforts to combat malnutrition at an earlier stage, such as the ongoing
Niger intervention, are crucial in dealing with the recurrent
nutritional crises affecting many countries in Africa’s Sahel region.
These efforts can only be sustained through long-term financial
commitments from main international donors.


According to a World Bank evaluation, it costs $12.5 billion annually
to adequately fund recognized effective nutrition interventions in the
most-affected countries. An MSF analysis estimates that only a small
fraction of this is actually spent annually – just $350 million in 2007.


A financial transaction tax for health could transform some of the
world’s malnutrition “hotspots” and put governments much closer to
adequately treating and preventing a main cause of childhood deaths
worldwide.


One such funding mechanism for health already exists in the form of
UNITAID, the international agency that finances HIV/AIDS treatment
programs through miniscule taxes on airfares. The International Monetary
Fund recently deemed financial transaction taxes feasible, and at the
MDG Summit, France and Japan will endorse and promote financial
transaction taxes as a promising method to raise funds for development

aid.