Kirk Smith: Environment/Health/Medical News

Beware of Bush Bearing Gifts

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:09:23 GMT

07 Jul 03

Bush's commitment to provide additional funds lays down the gauntlet to European Union, and not before time. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is in dire need of money. But should we be thankful for Bush's lead on this issue? It's a debatable point. Behind the headlines - and qualified support from international NGOs for the new funds - lies a different story.

To start with, only $10 billion of Bush's pledged $15 billion is new. Second, as ActionAid has pointed out, there's no guarantee that this money will be spent over the next five years. The U.S. Congress has to sign off the funds each year, and recent history is littered with aid initiatives that slid into the sand. A recent joint report from U.S. think-tanks the Center for Global Development and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that as little as $45 million of Bush's money to fight AIDS will be spent in 2004.

There is also the question of whether the funds will be tied aid - a hallmark of U.S. official development assistance. Revealingly, the USA has said it will deliver only one third of pledged dollars through the Global Fund, with the remaining money coming as bilateral aid. The Global Fund was set up specifically to be free of the conditionality associated with tied aid and it champions the purchase of the cheaper generic drug treatments central to fighting HIV/AIDS in the least-developed countries.

The USA has in fact opened its taxpayers' chequebook to safeguard the patent rights of its powerful pharmaceutical lobby. The Bush plan states that 2 million sufferers of HIV/AIDS will be provided with drug treatments. This could be a bonanza for U.S. drug corporations whose AIDS drug sales in Africa account for just 0.2 per cent of turnover.

If other U.S. aid programmes are anything to go by, contracts to supply treatments will be offered to US pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, which reportedly rakes in profits of more than $1 million an hour. Yet overseas manufacturers of generic treatments can massively undercut the price of Western drugs. [OneWorld.net]

New Lords of Africa

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:05:21 GMT

by Saskia Sassen

09 Jul 03

Warlords. They have a bad name but not all they do is bad. Their basic premise is that a good gun is better than a good law. Then there is the horsetrading: you give me oil, I will get you aid for Aids treatment; horsetrading can work when bureaucrats fail. Some warlords are grubby, others are imperial: as in Liberia, the warlord can descend from the heavens and declare it's time for the old order to go. Then there is the domestic warlord: the cowboy or the caudillo, always riding something - a horse, a tank - to an unknown destination.

Although warlordism is not new, it has had to adjust to new settings, like international treaties and whatnot. And it has had to become far more complex and indirect in its horsetrading. Bush is becoming a warlord who can handle it all. Two cases come to mind. One is the current visit to Africa, where Bush wants access to oil and the installation of U.S. military bases and troops to make the region secure against terrorism. The second is the Bush administration's handling of the World Trade Organisation Doha declaration giving poor countries the right to override pharmaceutical patents in public health emergencies. [Guardian/UK]

World Heritage Protection Extended to Five Natural Sites

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 02:12:17 GMT

08 Jul 03

PARIS, FRANCE. Five new natural sites were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List by the UN body's World Heritage Committee meeting at its Paris headquarters last week. The newly protected natural sites were listed along with 19 new cultural sites, some of which are also valued for their natural features.

The World Heritage List compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) committee now numbers 754 sites, including 149 natural, and 582 cultural and 23 mixed sites of outstanding universal value.

Rich in ancient fossils, Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland is now on the UNESCO World Heritage List. (Photos courtesy UNESCO)

The new natural sites are - Australia's Purnululu National Park, Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas in China, Uvs Nuur Basin in both the Russian Federation and Mongolia, Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland, and Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam.

The committee also extended one natural site that is already inscribed on the World Heritage List to cover a greater area, the Central Amazon Conservation Complex in Brazil.

One natural and two cultural sites were determined by the committee to be in grave danger. On Friday the committee inscribed three sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger - the Walled City of Baku in Azerbaijan, Comoê National Park in Cóte d'Ivoire, and Nepal's Kathmandu Valley. The List of World Heritage in Danger today numbers 35 sites throughout the world. [Environment News Service]

Report Criticizes Federal Oversight of State Medicaid

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:36:48 GMT

by Robert Pear

07 Jul 03

The Bush administration has allowed states to make vast changes in Medicaid but has not held them accountable for the quality of care they provide to poor elderly and disabled people, Congressional investigators said today.

The administration often boasts that it has approved record numbers of Medicaid waivers, which exempt states from some federal regulations and give them broad discretion to decide who gets what services.

But the investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, had 'not fully complied with the statutory and regulatory requirements' to monitor the quality of care under such waivers. [The New York Times]

Sugar Giants Shove Their Sweetener

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 20:51:26 GMT

by Chris Tenove

Jul/Aug 2003 Issue

What does anybody know about the sugar industry? The people who put the frosting on the frosted flakes keep a low profile and are happy when folks are too busy eating to ask a lot of questions. Now, though, a dust-up with the World Health Organization (WHO) has flushed them into the limelight, where they're pitting profits against public health.

The conflict was inflamed by a new set of dietary guidelines drawn from two years of research by the WHO and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. The guidelines are part of a worldwide strategy to tame the swelling epidemic of obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases. One recommendation is that free sugars (i.e. sugar added to foods) should make up no more than 10 percent of our daily caloric intake. The sugar lobby reacted to that suggestion like a toddler asked to hand back his Halloween booty...

'It was particularly stupid for them to put in writing that they're going to try to get Congress to take away WHO's money,' says Michael Jacobsen, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. 'It gave consumers a chance to see the kind of bullying that is usually done behind closed doors.' [Adbusters]