Almost the entire cost of health care in the developing world is borne by the developing countries themselves. According to two separate estimates, aid from international health organizations in the developed countries pays for less than 5% of the total health care costs in the developing world.
The estimates do not specify exactly what they include as health aid, but they probably omit the value of food relief and other health-related disaster relief, as well as money spent on water supply and sanitation projects, although these activities have important health benefits. Nor do they seem to include the work done in the home offices of international health organizations –
e.g. the publication of manuals for health care workers in developing countries, the development of model health care systems, the strategic planning for campaigns against tropical diseases.
Finally these estimates omit the monetary value of the following: the labor of volunteer health workers, research in tropical diseases done at medical institutions in the industrialized countries, drug development for tropical diseases by major pharmaceutical firms
Friday, March 20, 2009
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