IMF Grants the Freedom to Die

28/07/08

Thousands of people in eastern Europe are dying from tuberculosis as a result of the intervention of the International Monetary Fund – a US inspired tool of economic control.

Senior analysts from Cambridge University in England and Yale University in the USA have concluded that strict conditions placed on IMF loans to the European countries have led to drastic cuts in health services and the consequent rise of TB.

The British charity, TB Alert, has backed the Public Library of Science study findings.

The IMF is notorious for demanding ruthless cuts to public services and sweeping privatisation in return for financial loans to struggling governments. Since the fall of the USSR and other socialist governments at the beginning of the ‘90s, the international finance body has imposed privatisation targets on 21 countries in the region.

The university researchers claimed it was efforts to meet these targets that was undermining the fight against TB, by drawing funding away from public health. They looked at the timing of rises in the TB rate and compared them with the timing of IMF intervention.

A direct relationship could be seen – the start of the increases matched the starting point of IMF programs, and continued rising as the programs continued. This meant at least a 16.6 per cent increase in deaths across the 21 countries.

Countries that accepted the IMF loans averaged an eight per cent fall in government spending, a seven per cent drop in the number of doctors per head of population and a fall in a method of TB treatment that is recommended by the World Health Organisation.

The researchers have suggested that, without the IMF loans, death rates would have fallen by up to 10 per cent. The brutal statistic being that IMF money and subsequent privatisation has resulted in at least 100,000 extra deaths.

In a response to the findings, which is characteristic of their almost nihilistic free-market thinking, an IMF spokesperson said: “I suppose anyone can try finding a rationale for anything. This is an example of that.”

One of the university study’s authors, Dave Stuckler said that the IMF “had its priorities backwards”.

“If we really want to create sustainable economic growth, we need first to ensure we have taken care of people’s most basic health needs,” he continued.

Paul Sommerfield, from TB Alert, said the surge in TB-related deaths could be directly attributed to cuts in public spending.

"It has long been evident that the surge of TB in ex-USSR countries through the ‘90s was an unforeseen and unwelcome result of the end of communism – because of the vast drop in public spending, including on public health, of which IMF policies are a contributory part.”