Oxfam: Private sector is not the answer to poverty... [View All]

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Published on Friday, September 1, 2006 by the lndependent/UK
Private Sector 'Not the Answer to Poverty'
by Philip Thornton

Rich countries must deliver more money directly to poor nations to avert a growing health and sanitation crisis spreading across the southern hemisphere, Oxfam will say today.

Also See:
In the Public Interest: Health, Education, and Water and Sanitation for All
The global charity said investment in health care, water, sanitation and education must be delivered by governments rather than the private sector.

Belinda Calaguas, the head of policy at WaterAid, which produced the report jointly with Oxfam, added: "There are more than a billion people living without access to clean, safe water and 2.6 billion people have nowhere to go to the toilet. That leads to the inevitable spread of water-related diseases which claim the lives of 6,000 children every day."

The report condemned the World Bank for forcing privatisation or inappropriate private sector projects on developing countries, and criticised Western governments for signing up to the so-called Washington agenda.

It said the scale of the problems in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa was so vast it could be solved by direct government action - in the same way the industrialised world tackled its own health and water issues in the 19th century.

The report said it was a "scandal" that people were still living without basic services. It said in a single day, 4,000 children are killed by diarrhoea, a disease caught from dirty water; 1,400 women die needlessly in pregnancy or childbirth; and 115 million school-age children, most of them girls, do not go to school. It would cost an extra $47m (£25m) a year to meet the goals set by the UN to be achieved by 2015.

Barbara Stocking, the director of OxfamGB and a former regional NHS director, said: "The key message is that this can be done. The amount of money is not huge." Oxfam said that developing countries would only achieve healthy and educated populations if their governments took responsibility for providing essential services.

The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0901-04.htm