The World Bank: false financial and statistical accounts and medical malpractice in malaria treatment

Abstract

The World Bank has an annual budget of US$20 billion and is the largest organisation operating with a mission to reduce poverty worldwide. Malaria destroys about 1 million lives a year; the disease is the leading parasitic cause of death for Africas children and impoverishment for their families. Here we examine how these factors meet in the new Global Strategy & Booster Program which is the Banks plan for controlling that disease in 2005--10.1 We believe this plan is inadequate to reverse the Banks troubling history of neglect for malaria. In the past 5 years the Bank has failed to uphold a pledge to increase funding for malaria control in Africa has claimed success in its malaria programmes by promulgating false epidemiological statistics and has approved clinically obsolete treatments for a potentially deadly form of malaria. Crucially the Bank also downsized its malaria staff so that it cannot swiftly execute the restoration it plans under the Global Strategy & Booster Program. We summarise the evidence show that the Bank possesses demonstrably little expertise in malaria and argue that the Bank should relinquish its funding to other agencies better placed to control the disease. (excerpt)