In response to the publication today of Bloomberg’s investigation into human rights abuses alleged to have been committed in private hospitals funded by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and development finance institutions (DFIs) run by rich country governments, Oxfam International’s Health Policy Manager Anna Marriott said:
“These grim findings make one thing brutally clear: nothing has changed. The World Bank and other development banks, including those of the UK and France, are still bankrolling profiteering from expensive, out-of-reach healthcare and abhorrent human rights violations.
“This is a grotesque betrayal of the very principles these institutions claim to uphold. Development banks should be reducing inequality and poverty, yet their investments in private healthcare are worsening both. Access to healthcare is a fundamental human right and needs to be safeguarded from the ‘private finance first’ approach that dominates today’s development agenda.”
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- Oxfam published two reports, “Sick Development” and “First, Do No Harm,” in June 2023. These reports detail wide-ranging evidence of harm including patient extortion, imprisonment of patients and denial of emergency treatment in private, for-profit hospitals in the Global South funded by the UK government’s British International Investment (BII, formerly CDC), Germany’s Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG), France’s Proparco, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the World Bank Group’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
- Over 70 organizations, including Oxfam, are calling for a halt to all future direct and indirect DFI funding to private, for-profit healthcare providers, an independent and comprehensive evaluation into active and historic investments, and urgent action to remedy any harm resulting from these investments.