World Bank accused of lying over funding to fight malaria

[AGENDA21]

The world's largest foreign aid organisation is accused today of deception and medical malpractice that has contributed to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of children from malaria.

The World Bank, which has a $20bn (£11.2bn) budget and a mission to reduce poverty, is alleged to have published misleading financial claims and false statistical accounts and wasted money on ineffective medicines for treating the disease, which kills more than a million people a year, 90 per cent of them children.

More than half a billion people suffer from malaria and incidence of the disease is getting worse. Eight years ago the World Bank, with the World Health Organisation and the UN Global Fund, launched the Roll Back Malaria programme to halve malaria deaths by 2010. Instead, the toll has risen by at least a quarter and in some areas by 50 per cent. The WHO estimates 3,000 children die from it each day.

Today, 13 malaria specialists from around the world accuse the World Bank of reneging on its promise to spend at least $300m on malaria control in Africa. They say much of its spending from 2000 to 2005 has been concealed, but the available figures suggest it has spent less than half the amount pledged.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article359977.ece