Global Corporate Policy for Financing Health Services in the Third World: The Structural Adjustment Crisis

Western nations and international financiers are usually the donors for most of the Third World countries. International funds allocated for development projects in these nations are under control of such groups, in which global corporate policy, bureaucracy, and neo-liberalization play a major role. International financiers also bias the socio-political, environmental, local administration, and even public health policy of the poor nations. Financial packages are usually sanctioned, distributed, and reimbursed under strict terms and conditions that Third World nations must heed and agree to with the fundamental commitment to change accordingly. Obviously, these terms and conditions are complicated for local governmental authorities. In most of the implementation phase of a project supported by foreign loan/aid, the efficient features of their own or the donors may be reflected, while the proposal and prospects for the actual benefits are left to the local populace. Cutting government spending and neglecting the benefits to poor people, global capitalism maintains corporate policy that may also focus on the goals of profit making instead of public benefit. As such, enhancing privatization, structural adjustments have been devised by the international financiers in many sectors. The reason is that private sectors must necessarily comply with the market dynamics of free choice and with the belief that it could be more efficient and equitable than the local government's action. It is thus important that healthcare professionals, government officials, and others solicit their opinions about international policy on privatization programs through a range of cost-benefit analyses. In order to identify and evaluate the negative effects of structural adjustment, this article comments on international policy for financing health services in the Third World.