The survey polled more than 50,000 people in 64 countries people between June and September 2004.

The rate of bribery was, not surprisingly, much higher in developing countries. For example, in Cameroon more than 50 percent of respondents said they or a member of their household had paid a bribe.

In Nigeria, Kenya, Lithuania and Moldova, 1 in 3 respondents said they or a household member had paid a bribe.

There was some good news, such as surprisingly low levels of bribe paying in South Africa, as well as a surprising level of corruption in Greece where 11 percent of those polled admitted they or a household member had paid a bribe.

Transparency International board member Akere Muna, who heads up the organization’s Cameroon branch, said in a press release,

It is time to use international co-operation to enforce a policy of zero tolerance of political corruption, and to put an end to practices whereby politicians put themselves above the law — stealing from ordinary citizens and hiding behind parliamentary immunity.

Political parties and politicians they nominate for election are entrusted with great power and great hopes by the people who vote for them. Political leaders must not abuse that trust by serving corrupt or selfish interests once they are in power.

According to the BBC, the World Bank estimates that as more than $1 trillion is paid out annually worldwide in bribes.

Source:

One in 10 families ‘pays bribes’. The BBC, December 9, 2004.

Political parties are most corrupt institution worldwide according to TI Global Corruption Barometer 2004. Press Release, Transparency International, December 9, 2004.

Transparency International: 1 in 10 Families Worldwide Pays Bribes is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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On under-five mortality, for example,

60 percent of the people in the Middle East and North Africa are in countries on track to reach the goal for under-five mortality, 39 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 28 percent in Europe and Central Asia, 17 percent in East Asia and Pacific, 10 percent in South Asia, and 0 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

A similar situation holds for efforts to reduce maternal mortality,

84 percent of the people in the Middle East and North Africa are in countries on track to reach the goal for maternal mortality, 69 percent in East Asia and Pacific, 19 percent in Europe and Central Asia, 3 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 0 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

When it comes to poverty and malnutrition, however, the situation is a bit better despite recent economic problems,

Some good news: 80 percent of the world’s people live in a country that is on track to hit the malnutrition target.

Sources:

Many Countries Falling Behind In Race To Improve Health And Reduce Deaths By 2015. Press Release, World Bank, November 10, 2004.

The millennium development goals for health – rising to the challenges. (PDF) World Bank, 2004.

World Bank Report Finds Mixed Results in Meeting Millennium Development Goals is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Why foist this food [aid] upon us? We don’t want to be choked, we have enough.

But in early July, Zimbabwe was making backdoor appeals tot he World Bank for millions in aid, especially to its agricultural sector. Zimbabwe’s agricultural output all but collapsed after Mugabe forcefully displaced the nation’s white farm owners.

The World Bank refused Zimbabwe’s request, saying that it would only consider aiding Zimbabwe when that country takes care of servicing its outstanding $280 million World Bank debt.

Source:

Government secretly pleads with World Bank. Savious Kwinika, Zimbabwe Standard (Harare), July 4, 2004.

Zimbabwe: We Don’t Need Food Aid . . . Oops, Hold On A Second, Yes We Do is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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This is a traditional method that was commonly used before the introduction of DDT in the 1950s and is once again being looked at as part of the solution to malaria.

The idea is to stock ponds, rivers and wells with fish like guppies that feed on the mosquito larvae. Dr. VP Sharma of the COuncil for Medical Research said that while the technique could not be used everywhere, in places where it was appropriate to use it had virtually eliminated a subspecies of malaria-carrying mosquito in some districts where mosquito-eating fish were introduced.

According to the BBC, Sharma credited the fish introduction program for India’s falling malaria rate which declined by about 200,000 cases per year after the program’s introduction. Sharma did add that, “It will take another five years before the real impact would be known” from the numerous fish introduction programs that the World Bank is underwriting.

Source:

Fish eat away at malaria in India. Richard Black, BBC, January 5, 2004.

India Uses Low-Tech Method of Malaria Control: Fish that Eat Mosquitoes is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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Wolfensohn rightly chastised the developed world for spending just $56 billion in foreign aid while devoting $300 billion to farm subsidies. Wolfensohn said,

There is further imbalance between what rich countries spend on development assistance– $56 billion a year– compared with the $300 billion they spend on agricultural subsidies and $600 billion for defense. The poor countries themselves spend $200 billion on defense-more than what they spend on education. Another major imbalance.

. . .

Action on trade is equally important. It is inconsistent to preach the benefits of free trade and then maintain the highest subsidies and barriers for precisely those goods in which poor countries have a comparative advantage. Developing countries also need to help themselves on this point, since they pay substantial tariffs in South-South trade.

Certainly good to hear as far as it goes, but at least one attendee — Demba Moussa Dembele of Senegal — told the BBC that Wolfensohn and the World Bank were also engaged in their own form of hypocrisy,

It was the World Bank which insisted our countries open up to trade and investment from the North and told us to trust in global markets.

Didn’t the Bank know about the market distortions created by subsidies and trade restrictions? It should not just urger the North to change its policies, but take responsibility for misleading us down the path of rigged prices and poverty.

In fact, it is interesting that while Wolfensohn devoted plenty of time to criticizing the developing and developed countries, he couldn’t afford even a single sentence for a little introspection about the World Bank’s failures.

Being from the World Bank apparently means never having to say you’re sorry.

Sources:

A New Global Balance: The Challenge of Leadership. James Wolfensohn, September 23, 2003.

Growing gulf between rich and poor. Rick Rowden, The BBC, September 24, 2003.

World Bank President Chastises Developed World, But Developing Countries Not Impressed is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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The problems with services range from lack of improved sanitation to few educational opportunities. For example, 2.5 billion people still lack access to improved sanitation around the world.

The report finds that — surprise — simply throwing money at these problems rarely arrives at solutions. The Middle East, for example, spends more per capita on education than any other developing region, but still has some of the highest illiteracy rates in the world due to unequal access for women and girls.

According to a press release announcing the report,

The productivity of public spending varies enormously across countries. Ethiopia and Malawi spend roughly the same amount per person on primary education – with very different outcomes. Peru and Thailand spend vastly different amounts – with similar outcomes.

The Report concludes that no one size fits all. The type of service delivery mechanism needs to be tailored to characteristics of the service and circumstances of the country. For instance, if the service is easy to monitor, such as immunization, and it is in a country where the politics are pro-poor, such as Norway, then it can be delivered by the central government directly, or contracted out. But if the politics of the country are such that these resources are likely to be diverted to the well-off by way of patronage, and the service is difficult to monitor, such as student learning, then arrangements that strengthen the clientÂ’s power as much as possible are necessary. Means-tested voucher schemes, as in Colombia or Bangladesh, community-managed schools as in El Salvador, or transparent, rule-based programs, such as MexicoÂ’s ‘Progresa”, are more likely to work for poor people.

The report recommends three basic ways to improve basic services to the poor,

1. By increasing poor clientsÂ’ choice and participation in service delivery, so they can monitor and discipline providers. School voucher schemes – such as a program for poor families in Colombia, or a girlsÂ’ scholarship program in Bangladesh (that paid schools based on the number of girls they enrolled) – increase clientsÂ’ power over providers, and substantially increased enrollment rates. Community-managed schools in El Salvador, where parents visited schools regularly, lowered teacher absenteeism and raised student test scores.

2. By raising poor citizensÂ’ voice, through the ballot box and making information widely available. Service delivery surveys in Bangalore, India, that showed poor people the quality of the water, health, education and transport services they were receiving compared to neighboring districts, increased demand for better public services, and forced politicians to act.

3. By rewarding the effective and penalizing the ineffective delivery of services to poor people. In the aftermath of a civil war, Cambodia paid primary health providers in two districts based on the health of the households (as measured by independent surveys) in their district. Health indicators, as well as use by the poor, in those districts improved relative to other districts.

Sources:

Basic services ‘fail world’s poor’. The BBC, September 21, 2003.

World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work For Poor People. World Bank, September 2003.

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The World Bank estimates that 1.2 million people in Central and Eastern Europe are currently infected with HIV, and that number is growing by as much as 25 percent annually. About a quarter million people in the region, for example, were infected with HIV in 2002. The total number of people infected with HIV in Central and Eastern Europe is expected to rise to 8 million by the end of the decade.

The World Bank warned that if that infection rate is not curtailed, it could have serious widespread effects. In a press release, the World Bank said,

An uncontrolled HIV/AIDS epidemic could have devastating consequences on health and development in ECA, the report warns. If the HIV epidemic becomes widespread among the working age groups in the region, annual economic growth rates could decline by 0.5 to 1.0 percent. The effects of this drop will be compounded by rising health expenditures, which could increase by 1-3 percent, with substantial impacts on the health budgets of poorer countries in the region. Furthermore, the dependency ratio (the ratio of non-economically active to economically active people) could rise, which would severely strain social protection systems.

Despite such warnings, some country’s in the region aren’t doing much to combat the AIDS epidemic. For example, Russia’s total spending on AIDS is less than 1 percent that of Great Britain, even though Russia has 20 times as many HIV infected individuals than Great Britain. Five hundred people a month die from AIDS-related causes in Russia, with that number projected to increase to as much as 20,000 per month by 2020.

Sources:

Europe’s looming Aids ‘catastrophe’. David Bamford, The BBC, September 16, 2003.

HIV / AIDS Epidemic in the ECA Region. World Bank, September 2003.

Averting AIDS Crises in Europe and Central Asia. Press Release, World Bank, September 16, 2003.

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Based on surveys of donor countries and external estimates of their spending, Narasimhan and Attaran estimate that RBM receives roughly US$98 million annually. It would need about US$1.5-$2 billion annually to reach its goal of halving malaria deaths.

The odd thing is that this estimate is filled with a bizarre level of uncertainty. Switzerland, for example, told the researchers that not only did they not know how much their country was giving for malaria control, but they did not even know how to go about finding out since malaria control spending was subsumed into larger health spending budgets. Narasimhan and Attaran write that this will pose enormous problems for funding of malaria control efforts,

In short, the Swiss answer, which seems likely to apply to some other donors too, is that the extent of malaria control funding is not just unknown, but actually unknowable. Leaving aside the reasons why this is true (e.g. it is found in integrated health programmes and not easily disaggregated), this poses a huge strategic threat to RBM’s goals: What is the likelihood of increasing malaria control funding, when the donors lack the accounting procedures and ability to know how much they are spending? Without reliable financial surveillance, there is good reason to suspect that aid to malaria control will stagnate, as it has done for decades, without triggering public pressure to demand improvement.

The other interesting thing is that the $98 million spending estimate is significantly smaller than other estimates that put annual malaria control spending at US$130 to $160 million. Part of the reason for the difference is that some organizations, including the World Bank, appear to be exaggerating their malaria control spending (emphasis added),

Although the Bank publicly claims that “at present, World Bank direct financing for malaria control activities is over $200 million in more than 25 countries”, we find on the Bank’s own project list only 10 countries having “active” malaria control projects [22]. In India, where in 1997 the Bank pledged its largest malaria control effort ($164.8 million), the project neared its close in 2003 after disbursing little over a quarter of this amount. In Africa, where 90% of malaria deaths occur, the Bank has only 4 active projects: in the Comoros, Eritrea, Madagascar, and Senegal. Yet not one of these countries suffers particularly intense or sustained malaria transmission – three are hardly malarious at all by African standards – meaning that the Bank’s efforts will contribute little to halving the burden of malaria.

Worst of all, the Bank has practically reneged on the dramatic pledge it made to two dozen African heads of state at Abuja in April 2000 to provide “up to $500 million more…for the fight against malaria in Africa” [23]. Nearly three years after that pledge, Eritrea is the only country to receive a new loan expressly including malaria control (the loan package is $40 million, split among 4 diseases). Assuming that the each disease in the Eritrea loan package receives an equal share, then the Bank’s new lending for malaria control since Abuja amounts to only $10 million; and three years after Abuja, up to $490 million of the $500 million that the Bank promised remains uncommitted and unspent. Furthermore, at this writing (December 2002), the Bank’s own malaria project list shows not one new African malaria control project in the planning pipeline. There seems to be no activity underway at the Bank to keep the promise that was made.

The authors recommend that the World Bank appoint a malaria “czar” to oversee malaria control projects in much the same way it appointed an AIDS “czar” to oversee AIDS control projects.

They also criticize views in Western donor nations that malaria spending is wasted because developing nations do not have the health care infrastructure to meaningfully absorb the aid. Instead, they argue that this is a sort of chicken-or-egg problem — additional spending on malaria would drive the creation of additional health care infrastructure. I suspect donor nations are a bit more skeptical than are Narasimhan and Attaran. As the authors themselves concede, the United States, for example, spent billions on malaria control in the 1960s with very little to show for it.

Source:

Roll Back Malaria? The scarcity of international aid for malaria control. Vasant Narasimhan and Amir Attaran, Malaria Journal, April 15, 2003.

Malaria project in funding crisis. BioMed Central, Press Release, April 25, 2003.

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According to The State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization, as many as 37 million children under the age of one are not immunized against the six major vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood: tuberculosis, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio and measles.

Moreover, the inability of underdeveloped countries to pay for vaccines combined with ongoing property rights disputes over ownership of drugs and vaccines in such countries acts as disincentive for further research into vaccines for diseases that plague the developing world.

According to the report,

Today, vaccine manufacturers have little commercial incentive to develop vaccines against diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, which kill millions of people in developing countries, but relatively few in the developed world. For example, of the approximately US$600 million a year invested in HIV vaccine research, the majority comes from the US National Institutes of Health (a public sector institution). To put that amount in perspective, in 1999, research spending on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS was about US$3 billion in Europe and the United States alone. Other diseases fare just as badly. In the 1996 report Investing in Health Research and Development, WHO highlighted some of the distortions in global health research funding. At the time of the study, acute respiratory infections, diarrheal disease and TB — which together account for almost 8 million deaths a year, mainly among the poor — attracted an estimated US$99-133 million. . . By contrast, more was spent on research into asthma — an estimated US $127-158 million — which accounts for 218,000 deaths a year worldwide.

Of course the report ignores the possibility that the relatively heavy funding in asthma is what is responsible for such a low worldwide death toll, but even so the amount estimated to be spent on research into diseases that kill 8 million people is staggeringly low.

Source:

Vaccine policy leaves millions at risk. The BBC, November 20, 2002.

State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization Report (PDF). UNICEF, 2002.

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In many parts of the developing world, few students learn to read or do basic math, with girls being disproportionately undereducated. Worldwide more than 125 million children do not attend school, largely due to a lack of funding.

The World Bank hopes to start 10 pilot projects in June, and then focus its money on those projects that are most successful at increasing primary school enrollment.

The World Bank wants developed countries to put up $1 billion immediately to pay for these new projects as well as fund existing projects.

Source:

World Bank pushes ‘education for all’. David Schepp, The BBC, April 21, 2002.

World Bank Wants Universal Primary Education is a post from: Overpopulation.Com

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