Bill and Melinda Gates have been pouring billions into programmes designed to help the health of residents in poor nations. To determine the return various projects generate, Gates helped finance a World Bank investigation into the efficiency of measures to improve the health of the world’s poor.
The World Bank studied the results of programmes meant to help the poor and found that even programmes designed to reach poor people often end up instead helping the better-off.
According to the researchers:
The World Bank remains optimistic that such programmes for the poor can be made to work. On the other hand, the World Bank was founded almost six decades ago and only now is releasing reports showing that some of the most promoted programmes for the poor in the history of the world are more likely to benefit the rich, says author James Peron.
Source: James Peron, The World Bank Gets Introspective, TSC Daily, January 9, 2006; and Reaching the Poor with Health, Nutrition and Population Services: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why, edited by Davidson R. Gwatkin, Adam Wagstaff and Abdo S. Yazbeck, World Bank, December 2005.
For text: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010606I
For World Bank study: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPAH/Resources/Reaching-the-Poor/complete.pdf
For more on International: http://www.ncpa.org/pi/internat/intdex1.html
FMF Policy Bulletin/ 21 February 2006
