Health
Health tourism can be healthy
IPN Opinion article
The benefits of trade have for too long been driven away from healthcare by ring-fenced nationalised systems and vested interests. Now evidence suggests that trade can slow the rise in healthcare costs and be a valuable source of revenue for developing countries.
Subsidies for the rich in poor countries
IPN Opinion article
Champions of local production see it as a way of decreasing transport costs, providing local jobs, increasing expertise, cutting dependence on foreign suppliers--thus lowering prices and magically improving access to drugs. But subsidies, protectionism and political criteria open the door to all sorts of bad policies and all sorts of bad medicines.
UN's Russian roulette for poor patients
IPN Opinion article
Sub-standard AIDS and malaria drugs can cause parasite resistance and clinical failure. Yet the Global Fund has been procuring such drugs for millions of low-income patients.
SA should avoid Britain's public health mistakes
IPN Opinion article
The South African government is hoping to create a 'universal' health system by imposing increasingly onerous regulations on the private sector. Evidence from Britain's health system shows this is doomed to failure.
The Food Crisis and Restrictive Trade Practices
IPN Opinion article
The food crisis in Nigeria and Africa can be linked to inappropriate agricultural policies that have stifled the continent's great agricultural potential. Over the years nothing has been done to address low yields--on the contrary, it seems as though government has gone out of its way to stifle production: governments remain part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Poor medicine for poor people
IPN Opinion article
New field research by Africa Fighting Malaria shows that a third of anti-malaria drugs collected in six African cities fail at least one quality test - yet aid agencies continue to fund untested, substandard drugs.
