Redistributing health?

The comments from Fran and co are right on the button! But the issue is not just about the poor in developing countries but the poor (and their health) in general. At a global level we need not to reform the World Bank, WTO and IMF but abandon them. They are not what Keynes envisaged would come out of the Bretton Woods Agreement. The voting in these is all too skewed towards the rich West and if the West cannot get its way there, it then retreats to the G7 and G8. What we need is the voice of the people as world citizens not to sort out this mess but to provide the values on which to sort out this mess. As Stiglitz – but only after he left his very senior position at the World Bank – has stated ’If the issue of [improving] access to AIDS drugs were put to a vote, in either developed or developing countries, the overwhelming majority would never support the position of the pharmaceutical companies.’ There is a gap between what informed citizens of the world want and what global institutions deliver. There seems also to be a gap between the values of a nation’s citizens and what is then provided by way of health care and public health.