Unhealthy development: How DfID promotes health privatisation

The recent exposure of the scale of the government’s toxic healthcare privatisation plans has reignited the debate on in whose interest should the NHS be run – patients or shareholders. NHS deficits, caused in part by extortionate Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes, are providing the government with the perfect cover to hand over the most profitable services to private companies. This ideological agenda to commercialise the NHS completely ignores decades of evidence and the expertise of the healthcare profession, driven instead by the interests of private healthcare companies, lobbyists and investors. Unfortunately this vision of a health system driven by corporate interests does not stop at national borders. For the last few years the Department for International Development (DFID) has increasingly been using the aid budget to promote the privatisation of health services in some of the poorest countries in the world. UNISON’s latest research Unhealthy Development exposes how DfID is implementing its healthcare privatisation agenda through multilateral agencies, consultants, multi agency programmers and its own private sector investment arm – the CDC Group. In 2015, £4.5bn of the UK’s aid spending was channeled through multilateral agencies. DfID is increasingly reliant on these bodies to implement its pro-privatisation agenda. The International Finance Corporation, for example, has supported the expansion of several global healthcare multinational companies ...
Source: UNISON meat hygiene - Category: Food Science Authors: Tags: General secretary's blog News DfID health privatisation Source Type: news