By Jeffrey SACHS, Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development
and Gallen Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University
Times are tough for the world's poorest countries. Always marginalized
in the world economic system, these countries are facing even more neglect
than usual. After a breakdown in diplomatic approaches, the rich world
is busy dropping bombs on Serbia, at a cost of billions of dollars per
month, and will no doubt devote billions more to cleaning up and fixing
the damage from the bombs once a diplomatic settlement is made finally.
Meanwhile, the poor countries are told that there is little left for them.
Debt relief for the poorest of the poor is likely to continue at a grossly
insufficient pace, even with new proposals that will be launched at the
G-8 summit. And many of the key international institutions that could actually
help the poor countries are seeing their budgets relentlessly cut.
A recent spectacle in Geneva was particularly egregious. The World Health
Organization, the leading institution charged with protecting global public
health, has made very important reforms in the past year under the new
leadership of Dr. Gro Bruntland, the former Norwegian Prime Minister. On
the basis of those reforms, and a new WHO agenda on global health, Dr.
Bruntland made the extremely modest request that the core WHO budget from
donor countries should be raised sufficiently to absorb rising costs due
to inflation and exchange rate changes. Yet even this modest request was
rejected by donor governments. WHO will continue to be squeezed for funds,
while the urgency of its mission rises by the day.
This decision, promoted mainly by the United States, reflects the sad
dereliction of US leadership evident in so many parts of the world. The
Clinton Administration has failed to pay US back dues to the UN, partly
because of Republican opposition in the Senate, but partly because the
Clinton administration simply hasn't been willing to champion worthy UN
activities as a priority for the US. On the one side the US presses for
reforms in the UN agencies, but when they happen, as at the WHO, the reforms
are met with US calls for still more budget stringency.
The result is a continuing disaster for the poorest countries, where
the burden of infectious disease is rising starkly, in diseases ranging
from malaria, to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. But rich countries, including
the US, should not kid themselves. Microbes do not respect national borders
and do not wait for passport checks. The alarming rise in infectious diseases
will burden the whole world, not just the poorest countries.
The sad irony is that recent scientific advances in biology and information
technology actually make possible the development and use of innovative
tools to face these killer diseases. Vaccine technology has leaped forward
in the past decade. Vaccines for all three of these dread diseases are
within scientific reach, but will requires some billions of dollars to
bring through the research and development stages to actual use. Yet even
at a cost of a few billion dollars, the human benefits per dollar saved
would be among the greatest contributions possible for humanity. After
all, the $10 billion or so it cost to bomb Kosovo this spring could probably
have paid for the needed scientific work over the next few years on all
three vaccines!
In area after area, including global climate change,
public health, international debt relief, financial system reform, the
neglect of the rich countries, and especially of the US, will sadly come
home to roost. The attention span of the rich world is too focused and
too limited. Our willingness to spend money seems to be much greater for
war than for peaceful and preventative solutions to the great problems
facing humanity, and especially those facing the poorest of the poor. It
is high time for international leadership on these issues.
© Project Syndicate






