New York, NY, September 20, 2010—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 today.
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—a levy as little as 0.005 percent on transactions of the world’s four most traded currencies—could generate an estimated $33 billion a year to implement the latest medical advances against global health threats, including malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.
Read more at www.doctorswithoutborders.org
“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.”
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