Newsletter 2, 8th April 2009

What a week it’s been! The G20 has come and gone, but what does this mean for the economic governance of health? The International Monetary Fund is the talk of the town, but what is it and what has the G20 done to boost its profile? What is the future for the International Health Partnership – a storm is brewing in Nepal.

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The G20 – the ‘Olympics of Spin’

Leaders of the G20 met in London last week to discuss, amongst other things, how to kick-start our ailing global economy. The spin-doctors quickly hit upon the magic figure of $1.1 Trillion – a massive sum which will underpin a ‘Global Plan for Recovery and Reform’. The $1 Trillion, of course, soon evaporates, once you start looking at the detail. As the Bretton Woods Project Report ‘G20 Trillion Dollar Magic Trick’ makes clear, barely $50 Billion will go to the poorest 49 countries.

Indeed, the breakdown makes the boost to the IMF look like a Bretton Woods love fest, with a possible $500 billion in new resources going straight into the coffers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, actual ‘new money’ – additional funds that haven’t already been promised from G20 members – is much harder to pin down, with vague references to supporting the Asian, African, and Inter-American multilateral development banks.

The International Monetary what?

Protest the spring IMF/World Bank meetings! 24-26th April 2009 Washington DC

Yes, the IMF is the ‘new kid’ on the development block – not in terms of longevity (it is one of the original ‘Bretton Woods’ IFIs) , but certainly in terms of profile. We all know about the World Bank and the WTO, but the IMF? What is it, and how does its policies affect our health?

The IMF was originally conceived at the end of the 2nd World War as a necessary safety net to protect countries against markets inability to guarantee employment. Since then it has transmuted into an arch defender of free markets, and continues to embrace market-led reform despite G20 leaders giving speeches to the contrary.

The IMF’s early experiments in structural adjustment were a disaster for the poor – as Public Citizen’s ‘Survey of IMF Impact on African Countries’ highlights. More recently, a 2008 study found that IMF economic reforms significantly worsened tuberculosis incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates in post-communist Eastern European and former Soviet countries.

Further, as ActionAid reports, there are conditions and public spending limits attached by the IMF to its loans that restrict developing countries from hiring necessary doctors, nurses and teachers.

So it comes as a surprise to learn that the G20 decided to pump so much money into the IMF without even stopping to consider whether it was due for an overhaul. In a searing critique of the G20 Communique, ‘Seizing the Wheel, and Crashing the Car’, EG4Health’s David Woodward argues:

“The IMF is not merely an inappropriate body to deal with the current crisis, with an excessively narrow mandate – it is quite simply not capable of doing so in anything resembling its current form”.

DFID under the Spotlight in Nepal

Just how committed is the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to supporting HIV/AIDS in Nepal? As AIDS activists in Nepal have pointed out, there is no mention of DFID’s 2007 £15-million programme in support of Nepal’s national HIV/AIDS programme, in its April 2009 Country Plan. Both Nepal and DFID have signed up to the International Health Partnership (IHP+), and there are concerns amongst the CSO community that DFID is turning its back on HIV/AIDS as it moves to support the health systems strengthening priorities of the IHP+.