In Need of a Global Health Insurance Plan

From the Archives

Previously filed under: Health
Medecins sans frontieres co-founder, Bernard Kouchner, says that a global health plan might be able to halt the spread of diseases that often start in developing countries.
The spectre of more world epidemics like SARS can be combatted by raising health standards in the poorest countries through a new global health insurance scheme, Medecins sans frontieres co-founder Bernard Kouchner said, reports the Montreal Gazette.

Kouchner calls the idea World Health Security. With colleagues at Harvard University's Medical School and the Conservatoire national des arts et metiers in Paris, where he teaches, he has asked the World Bank for $200,000 to do a feasibility study on it in the developing world. Though vague on the details of how it would work, Kouchner said eventually the World Bank could extend microcredit to grassroots organizations in poor countries to help them fend off disease—a kind of insurance policy against getting sick, given directly to poor people. In the industrialized countries of the North, "we're bloated with money compared with those who have none," said Kouchner.

"As long as we don't care about the diseases of the poor, we the rich will run a great danger of getting sick, too."
"We spend $2,000 per person per year on health. The poor of this planet get just $3 to $5 each. And that can't last," he said. "We're a big family on this Earth, and when the poor get sick we have to think of them. As long as we don't care about the diseases of the poor, we the rich will run a great danger of getting sick, too. "It's all one whole. You can't allow diseases to travel and not offer prevention and treatment. That's not possible."

Speaking to reporters, he predicted that soon "infectious diseases will touch everyone (and) either we stop travelling, which would be difficult, or every year there will be new health alerts."

With SARS, he added, "now a general awareness of public health has been awakened across the world, and that necessarily has to lead to another awareness: of the necessity of helping the whole world and not just the rich countries. And that's where the idea came from for global health insurance."




Reprinted with permission from the World Bank.

To read another Global Envision article about disease in a globalized world see A Global Disease.


Stories We're Watching

As Growth Slows, India Awakens to Need for Foreign Investment

International Herald Tribune - Wed, 02/08/2012 - 08:26
India’s central bank and economic analysts predict that growth will fall sharply to 7 percent this fiscal year and remain sluggish.

Social responsibility and a new world order

Washington Post - Innovations - Tue, 02/07/2012 - 07:56
Just before the New Year, the London-based Center for Economics and Business Research announced that Brazil had overtaken the United Kingdom as the world’s sixth largest economy. Furthermore, it predicted that by 2020, India and Russia will also have overtaken all the European economic powers.

Aid for trade policy rears its ugly head

The Guardian's Poverty Matters - Mon, 02/06/2012 - 01:41
The UK government's dismay at not being granted the contract for Typhoon fighter jets in India is an indication that its controversial aid for trade policy is still very much alive.

Liberia's battle to put the lights back on

The Guardian's Poverty Matters - Sun, 02/05/2012 - 23:00
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has set ambitious targets to restore the country's electricity supply. But will it meet them by 2015?

As Africa's consumers rise, so does inequality

Yale Global Online - Fri, 02/03/2012 - 10:17
Kenya struggles to spread the wealth from rapid growth.

Recent comments

Countries

An initiative of Mercy Corps
“You must be the change
you wish to see in the world”
Mahatma Gandhi
Learn more about Mercy Corps >

Efficiency

Over the last five years, more than 89% of Mercy Corps' resources have been allocated directly to programs

Excellence

America's premier charity evaluator gives Mercy Corps four stars in organizational efficiency. Click here to learn more.

High Value

Every dollar you donate to Mercy Corps helps us secure $11.16 in donated food and other critical supplies.

Mercy Corps — Dept. W — 45 SW Ankeny — Portland, OR 97204
All original content Copyright © 2009 Mercy Corps. Quoted and linked content is property of the creator(s). Mercy Corps will not sell, rent or trade your personal information.