January 25, 2022
[VIDEO] Global Theft in Global Health
This the first in a series of short videos on the topic of global theft and GH
So much of global health these days is defined by what we can do – or we can’t do – in the context of resource scarcity.
Low cost interventions like, say, task shifting to CHWs, or to TBAs are typical of our approach to GH to save money.
But it’s important to remind ourselves that the concept of resource scarcity in most LICs is largely a myth. Most of these countries, in fact, have more than enough resources for excellent health care. And for education, for water, for sanitation, and for other conditions that are important for good health.
What is most pressing, in fact, is the need to mobilize national and global resources that are critically necessary for these public health services.
But for decades, the biggest threat to this mobilization is the unconscionable global theft by the rich throughout the world.
Enormous resources exist today. The global economy has almost quintipuled over the last 3 decades. Nearly 90 trillion dollars per year.
Occasionally the GH community puts mobilization of existing resources on the radar.
Rarely, however, does the GH community draw attention to the enormous, systematic theft of these resources, either by, or enabled by, people in rich countries
We know that rich countries play a big role in creating health inequities, but there is remarkably little effort to look into the mirror to identify and address our role in this global theft.
Global theft comes in many forms, all of which have a devastating impact on the poor and vulnerable.
Most commonly we talk about corruption, mostly by people in the global south, which of course is a serous problem.
However, we must remember that a large amount of that corruption is enabled by parterns in rich countries, including bribery, including legal assistance, and money laundering
The amount and impact of illegal corruption pales by comparison to the legal theft by the wealthy in the global north
This legal theft takes a lot of forms, including
- Systematic tax evasion and tax avoidance in other ways
- Expropriation of raw materials, like water, without fair compensation
- Patents and trade regimens that are highly unfair to less powerful countries
- Currency speculation, whose impact can be devastating to smaller countries
- Corporate practices that lead to poverty wages through specifications to produce goods at rock bottom practices,
- Fomenting anti union practices that contribute to indecent working contributions, and their contributions to environmental devastation
It seems crazy to ask country leaders to mobilize their own resources when they are faced with so many systems of resource theft
Some in LICs, especially the elites, do actually quite well in the context of these practices,
But the poor suffer enormously when the systems are stacked against them at so many levels.
By: Steve Gloyd
