Patents, Private Charity and Public Health

The diseases are in the developing South, but the money and the patents are locked in the post-industrial North. The world's poor are in a free fall.

As governments of the develo ing world retreat from their welfare responsibilities and hive off public health functions to the private sector on advisement from international high finance, are we to begin depending on the charity and munificence of the multinational tycoons? When CNN founder and media magnate Ted Turner announced a billion dollars for humanitarian projects of the United Nations, everyone ooohed and aaahed without calling to account the many billions that are being wrested away from the social sector by governments of the developed and developing world. Bill Gates, richest man in the world over in Seattle, then went one up on Turner and everyone else by endowing the largest philanthropic organisation ever, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Last year, outperforming the US government on this front, he donated USD 300 million to charitable causes, primarily aimed at 'reversing' the health crisis among the world's poor. This fund targets global threats such as malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, and Gates' giving adds up to more than 25 percent of the total support given by the West towards health in the developing countries. What is the crisis in the globalised economy that governments both down here and out there, turn away so offensively from their public health commitments, leaving the field free for philanthropy and private benevolence—but most importantly to the rapacious market?