IMF loans 'drive TB deaths'

New Scientist: The International Monetary Fund could be bad for your health. The organisation loans money to countries with financial problems, and in return requires governments to undertake "structural adjustment" policies aimed at improving their financial management.

These usually cut government spending to control inflation. Critics have long charged that this reduces spending on healthcare, so much so that some have called for the organisation to be renamed the "Infant Mortality Fund".

David Stuckler and colleagues at the University of Cambridge have now tested this by analyzing TB data in 21 countries in central and eastern Europe that were involved with the IMF for different amounts of time after 1989 and borrowed different amounts of money. They found these were associated with 13% more TB cases, and 16% more deaths.

The countries started with TB death rates averaging six per 100,000 of the population. This rose to 12 per 100,000 by 2003 in countries with IMF loans, but sank in countries without them. In a detailed statistical analysis of the timing of the loans, the team found that this was not because countries with worsening TB simply attracted more IMF attention…

Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, Centers for Disease Contorl, Wikimedia Commons