This paper seeks to explain the policy-based lending progamme of the World Bank (WB), and the significance of its engagement with developing economies, Africa in particular. The authors find that the Bank, through its policy-based lending, dictates key policies to borrowing countries, thus eroding their autonomous police space and their ability to evolve economic policies best suited to their particular ecologies and peculiar circumstances. The risk of incurring the wrath of the Bank – which will make it to declare such a country non-creditworthy – is often too much for borrowing countries to bear. Clearly, a new model of development will have to emerge from popular political and class struggles at all levels of national and international communities, including the African Union (AU) and the enlarged G77.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
The proposed intervention by The Global Fund to drastically reduce prices of Artemisinin Combined Therapies (ACTs) through its Affordable Medicines for Malaria programme (AMFm) will see ACTs from six foreign companies sell ACTs at a reduced, monitored price regime of between US$0.40 and 0.47. However, controversy has arisen over two competing development goals - making high quality medicines available to those in need at affordable prices vs strengthening local industrial capacity. The paper argues from the Nigeria situation, that manufacturers in Nigeria have practically no access to bank credit and provide their own infrastructural requirements, compared to foreign counterparts who may have access to cheap credit, enjoy tax reliefs and export incentives. This makes it difficult for Nigerian manufacturers to compete with their foreign counterparts. It is not clear whether there are actual foreign assistance efforts aimed at building the capacity of malaria endemic countries in Africa to produce their own pharmaceutical products. The author suggests that if such a longer term project were started in parallel with efforts like AMFm, there may be more acceptance for temporary set backs in the local market, given that the international community is trying to strengthen countries’ abilities to fight malaria into the future. The author calls for an aid programme that can address the infrastructural problems facing Nigerian manufacturers and provide a legal framework that protects intellectual property and gives the local companies a fair chance to compete.
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has begun its court case to appeal in the Indian Supreme Court in a final bid to overturn a ruling earlier this year to prevent the company from renewing its patents on life-saving drugs. If Novartis wins the appeal, it will undermine a key public health safeguard in Indian patent law specifically designed to prevent drug companies from abusive patenting practices that keep medicine prices high, says international humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which relies on affordable generic drugs produced in India to carry out its work in 68 countries. MSF alleges that, for the past six years, Novartis has been trying to browbeat India into changing Section 3d of India’s patent law, which says that a new form of a known medicine can only be patented if it shows significantly improved therapeutic efficacy over existing compounds. This is a provision to stop the common industry practice of extending, or ‘evergreening,’ their patent monopolies for routine modifications of known compounds. Section 3d, which is in line with international trade rules, formed the basis for Novartis not being granted a patent for its cancer drug imatinib mesylate (marketed as Gleevec) in 2006, as Novartis’ patent application was on a new form of the imatinib molecule already described several years previously in patents in the United States and other developed countries.
This study identified opportunities to strengthen policies relating to sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in Zambia, through: (1) understanding the policy landscape and political context in which policies for nutrition-related non-communicable diseases are being developed, particularly sugar-sweetened beverage taxation, and exploring the potential use of revenue arising from sugar-sweetened beverage taxation to support improved nutrition. The authors conducted a retrospective qualitative policy analysis and key informant interviews with 10 policy actors. Increased regulation of sugar-sweetened beverages was a priority for the health sector, in conflict with economic interests to grow the manufacturing sector, including the food and beverage industries. The authors suggest that this conflict between public health and economic priorities, poor public information and incoherent policy objectives might have contributed to the adoption of a weakened excise tax. The authors suggest that the fact that it did not prevent the introduction of a differential sugar tax on sugar-sweetened beverages implies that there are opportunities to strengthen the existing taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages in Zambia, especially if backed by inclusive in policy formulation and comprehensive monitoring of risk factors.
Increased demand for seafood and its functional by-products has been associated with a concomitant rise in fishing and aquaculture activities. This increased consumption and processing of seafood is associated with more frequent allergic health problems among seafood processors, according to this overview of occupational allergies and asthma in seafood-exposed workers. It illustrates the changing nature of the fishing and seafood processing industry in the midst of ecological degradation and globalisation. It provides detailed insights into the major and minor allergens that have been identified and other pathophysiological mechanisms that have been ¬implicated in airway inflammation. More refined exposure assessment studies in recent times have enabled detailed characterisation of allergen exposure response relationships, which confirm the increased risk associated with elevated allergen exposures. Directions for future research and preventive strategies are outlined.
In this paper, the authors discuss the various aspects of occupational cancer in developing countries, focusing on the conditions of informal workers and firms. They found that estimating the burden of cancers attributable to occupational exposures is difficult as occupational cancers are usually clinically indistinguishable from those unrelated to occupation. Lack of reliable data is an obstacle to establishing the place for cancer prevention in public policies, particularly in poor regions. Workplaces are argued to be a substantial source of carcinogen exposures, together with psychosocial stressors that mediate exposure to cancer risk factors such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Enforcement of hazard control in workplaces is weak and workers’ organisations are not strong enough to ensure compliance with standards required for healthy and safe work environments. This situation is even more intense in the informal economy, where firms are beyond state control. There are reports of increased risks of cencer among informal workers compared to formal workers.
The metal mining industry employs about 15% of formally employed workers in Zambia, but there is little information about the magnitude of occupational injuries among the miners. This paper aimed to determine the frequency rates of occupational injuries and fatalities among copper miners in Zambia. A retrospective study of occupational injuries and fatalities at one of the largest copper mining companies in Zambia was undertaken for the period January 2005 to May 2007. In the selected period, 165 injuries and 20 fatalities were recorded. The most common cause of fatal injuries was fall of rock in the underground mines. The most frequent mechanism of injury was handling of tools and materials, and the most commonly injured body parts were the hands and fingers. The fatality rate is high compared to reported values from the metalliferous mining industry in developed countries, strongly suggesting that measures should be taken to reduce risks, particularly at underground sites.
The author asserts "there will be no drilling in paradise". Soco International, a British oil company, has abandoned plans to drill for oil in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The park is a World Heritage Site, and UNESCO says it is Africa's richest trove of natural beauty and biodiversity. Soco will leave in about a month, after completing a seismic survey of the park's Lake Edward, where drilling was to have commenced. Tens of thousands of local people depend on the lake for fish, and it is also home to thousands of hippopotamuses. Soco has vowed not to drill in the park without permission from UNESCO, and to keep out of all the world's 981 World Heritage Sites. The firm was under pressure after an expert report last month on the status of the park. French company Total pulled out last year. The DRC government has yet to remove overall permission for oil companies to search and drill for oil in the park.
In a joint statement released and endorsed by nearly 200 organisations across Africa and India on the occasion of the Third India-Africa Forum Summit taking place in New Delhi this week, African and Indian civil society reminds their governments of the key issues at stake at the forthcoming WTO Ministerial which will take place in Nairobi in December.
This article explains how trade preference programmes can be made more effective for poorer countries. It is based on five principles put forward by the Center for Global Development (CGD) to make trade preferences more effective for less-developed countries: expand coverage to all exports from all least developed countries; relax restrictive rules of origin; make trade preference programmes permanent and predictable; promote co-operation between countries giving and receiving preferences; and encourage advanced developing countries to implement trade preference programmes that adopt the other four principles. It argues that extending full duty-free, quota-free market access to all least developed countries would have far more power if it is a project of the G-20, not just the G-8, and Brazil, China, India and Turkey are already showing the way. The author urges the G-20 to show its leadership on global development issues and to realise the Millennium Development Goal of using trade as a tool for development.