Strive To Improve The Health Of Impoverished Populations Author: Steve Sternberg
The World Bank, once a stronghold of public-spirited but nonscientific economists, has over the past decade emerged as the major financier of research to improve the health of people in Third World countries.
Banking on Health: Richard G.A. Feachem, World Bank senior adviser on human development, has put health at the top of the bank's agenda. Each year, the World Bank invests $2 billion for health programs in impoverished nations, $500 million more than its nearest competitor, the United States Agency for International Development, according to Richard G.A. Feachem, the bank's newly appointed senior adviser on human development. The investment reflects the bank's recognition in the late 1980s that healthy workers are central to a healthy economy.
Feachem's goal-and that of his new employer-is a monumentally ambitious one: to ensure that disease does not prevent the world's poorest people...