"Turf battles" ruin medical relief
Healthcare efforts 'hampered' by budget failures
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Tuesday, 15, Aug 2006 01:03
"Senseless" battles between health development and relief agencies are inhibiting medical relief efforts, according to an executive director of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Medicine Without Borders).
Writing in the Public Library of Science journal, Gorick Ooms of the Belgian section of the medical relief agency, argues that health development advocates are contributing to the status quo of insufficient public health budgets by assuming that public health budgets will not be increased and then basing their healthcare estimations on these assumptions.
Although development agencies "want their interventions to be sustainable", Mr Ooms argues that their public health budgets are inadequate and that if they raised them then the level of healthcare within their countries would improve.
"In the field of healthcare, the issue of sustainability creates a dichotomy between medical relief and health development, because relief is unaffected by the condition of self-reliance," Mr Ooms writes.
"This dichotomy results in turf battles between the advocates of medical relief and the advocates of health development."
These "battles" have so far included the funding of HIV medicines and malnutrition and are, according to Mr Ooms, also being fought in medical literature.
"No matter which [approach] to health development one prefers, the conclusion is always the same: more national and international financial commitments to healthcare are needed, and sustainability - if narrowly defined as independent from international aid - is an illusion," he said.
Mr Ooms concluded that the current status quo of "insufficient public health budgets" must be firmly rejected.