Undermining the WHO

...Some 1,500 basic medicines are needed, at minimal cost...

...Ironically, their magnitude first received public attention thanks to the late U.S...

...They and t he U.S...

...The document's thrust was not disguised by diplomatic niceties...

...There, it appears, is the primary reason "Health for AH" is deemed so repugnant: Its emphasis on government health care provision threatens the private pharmaceutical companies, and even in the Third World the drug industry is dominated by multinationals based in the U.S...

...The Assembly at Geneva was unfortunately the occasion for some backsliding on this issue...

...The Heritage report, with obviously different interests in mind, reproved the WHO for sponsoring an "essential drugs list," and criticized what it called "ethical criteria for drug promotion...

...If the American lobby ultimately prevails, a main cause of death in the Third World —one that is entirely preventable—will remain beyond the reach of WHO's powers of intervention...

...While the well-organized pharmaceutical industry in India complains of government interference, its profits tell the real story...

...India, for example, may have an urban doctor-patient ratio of 1:35, comparable with the West's, but many of its rural areas are utterly untouched by modern medicine...

...I do not mean to suggest that there isn't room for genuine criticism of the policies and personalities in any of these outfits...

...Six years later, an official survey conducted by the Indian government found that 24 of the country's largest drug companies (82 per cent of whose shares were owned by multinationals) were able to recover their initial investment within a mere three years...

...Both were seen as tantamount to "a direct attack on the private drug production and sales industry...

...There is a measure of support in some developing countries for Washington's anti-unesco stand, but the same is not true in this case...

...Remarkably, what provoked all this mudslinging was the WHO's "Health for All by the Year 2000" program, promulgated back in 1978...

...The stand on breast milk substitutes is unassailable, despite the Heritage report's solicitude for the corporations that market them...

...Widely administered, these simple measures alone would alleviate more suffering than a host of costly pharmaceuticals...

...Ideological underpinning for the American threat was furnished by the conservative Heritage Foundation...

...Perhaps, some suggested, this could be explained by the fact that the declaration outlining the ambitious goals was signed at Alma Ata in the Soviet Union...

...yet easily preventible diseases like diarrhea and goiter...

...But one would hardly think there is anything sinister in such objectives as giving every child a reasonable chance of surviving to adulthood...

...The Geneva Assembly demonstrated that whether it be policy on drugs, baby food or tobacco, the diehard free-enterprisers have the whip hand...

...and its dollars...

...Warning shots were fired in Geneva last May at the 39th session of its supreme policy-making body, the World Health Assembly...

...Still, the American Rightwing has been suspicious...

...It should urge other nations to do so also...

...In the course of reporting on the baleful effects of patent right claims, the Senator observed that, "in drugs generally, India ranks among the highest priced nations in the world—a case of an inverse relationship between per capita income and the level of prices...

...Similarly, a few cents worth of iodized salt pills will prevent the disfiguring and frequently disabling condition of goiter...

...Campaigns against the commercial promotion of breast milk substitutes—such as the successful one waged by volunteer activists in the West against the Nestle Corporation—deserve every encouragement...

...On the matter of cigarettes, the Heritage Foundation's expressed displeasure with the WHO' s interest in reducing smoking was echoed by the U.S...

...the second is its goal of reducing world cigarette consumption...

...representatives declared in no uncertain terms that unless the WHO changes its policies, it will suffer the same fate as unesco—desertion by the U.S...

...must consider withdrawing from the WHO...

...Given the hard fact that most diseases in the Third World are waterborne, the hygiene of a baby's formula prepared with water cannot be guaranteed...

...But the assault on the WHO by the American Right cannot serve any purposes except those of multinational corporations, who would like a free hand in the developing world...

...the competitive market yields a far greater variety—and much redundancy—at prices only a rich minority can afford...

...To compound the problem, many of India's 13,000 yearly medical school graduates migrate to the U.S...

...For as is true of most UN specialized agencies, the U. S. largely controls the purse-strings of the World Health Organization...

...Putting aside for a moment the matter of corporate cupidity, it is clear enough that in poor countries—as well as many rich ones—private medicine simply cannot cope with the health problems of large segments of the population...

...The Moment of Truth," however, may bring us closer to the mark in speaking of the program as "a blueprint which tilts against successful private health care systems, in favor of state-run systems which, experience painfully teaches, fail to deliver medicine or care...

...In such circumstances it is absurd to insist on private health care systems...

...Every public health official knows, for instance, that the most effective way to combat diarrhea is "oral rehydration therapy"— a long-winded term for drinking boiled water with a pinch of salt added...

...and insuring that every person is within walking distance of a clinic that is open at least one day a week...

...The Heritage Foundation's analysis seemed to be endorsed on the whole by the U.S...

...The U.S...

...Critics of private provision of pharmaceuticals in the Third World have pointed out that the marketing strategies pursued by drug companies are ill-suited to the requirements of developing countries...

...It would be tragic if the Reagan Administration w ere to continue pursuing a course that at bottom amounts to putting ideology and profits over life and wellbeing...

...The report concluded by advising the Reagan Administration that failing the right decision, "theU.S...

...Moreover, the most useful remedies are often of scant interest to private drug companies because they involve cheap ingredients and little profit...

...Heritage went on to caution the organization that it "will have to decide whether..: it will slide down the sorry slope to irrelevance and waste, along with so many other agencies...

...and other Western countries...

...One could understand somebody dismissing the plan for sounding like little more than a well-meaning slogan, noble to contemplate and impossible to achieve in reality...

...delegation at the Assembly, although it appeared to have some reservations about the most extreme accusations...

...Two other elements of the "Health for All" program irk the Heritage Foundation: one is the WHO's opposition to the use of commercial breast milk substitutes...

...delegation proposed that the 1978 resolutionreject-ing breast milk substitutes be reworded in order to bring additional Western nations into a broader consensus...

...could take the money they now spend on the WHO and transfer it to other international health organizations, more serious about fighting for health than scoring political points...

...In recent years, however, politics seems to be replacing medicine and health on the WHO agenda...

...It began: "The WHO was established decades ago to fight disease and make the world a healthier planet...

...The foundation added that "for developing countries...

...Bangladesh and Pakistan have tried to insist that drugs be marketed gener-ically instead of by brand name...

...Senator Estes Kefauver, who in 1961 headed a Senate Committee investigating the restrictive practices and excessive prices of drug giants...

...the only effective provision of pharmaceuticals has been by private companies...

...The average annual expenditure of an Indian on drugs is a paltry $2...

...Just days before the Assembly convened, it published a report with an ominous title, "For the WHO: The Moment of Truth...

...These included charges that "WHO publications advance Soviet bloc propaganda," that the USSR is "using WHO officials in Afghanistan to provide intelligence for Soviet troops," and that" within the WHO Secretariat, the Soviets are a powerful force...

...of eliminating common Darryl D'Monte often writes for the NL on Indian and Third World affairs...

...Drafters of the original resolution—representatives from Third World and Scanda-navian countries—agreed, and the declaration emerged from the revision in a greatly diluted form...

...delegation when it rejected any attempt to hamper the tobacco industry...