World Bank triples funds for healthcare amid crisis

As the global economic crisis continues, the World Bank has tripled its funds for healthcare in order to provide relief to developing countries. Reuters reports that a new World Bank report said it would increase its healthcare funding from $1 billion last year, with evidence already that some governments are facing difficulties in affording HIV/AIDS drug therapies.
Preliminary findings from a March 2009 World Bank survey in 69 countries, which offer treatment to 3.4 million people on anti-retroviral treatment, shows that eight countries now face shortages of anti-retroviral drugs or other disruptions to AIDS treatment. No word yet if this tripling of funding will include help for Mexico's swine flu epidemic.

Panel Established for Global Healthcare

Reported today in The Boston Globe, a senior level committee has been give $10B to establish a plan for global health care. According to the article, the bipartisan Commission on Smart Global Health Policy, whose members include Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Olympia Snowe of Maine, was given a mandate yesterday to identify a more comprehensive strategy for spending the estimated $10 billion dedicated each year to assisting the most disease-plagued nations.
Retired Navy Admiral William J. Fallon is heading up the initatitive and the group plans to show their ideas early next year to President Obama. The commission's 26 members include several members of Congress; former top diplomats and intelligence officials such as John Negroponte; leaders of nonprofits such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala; the president of Barnard College; and executives from major corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Coca Cola, and drug giant Merck and Co.