You need to make sure you write everywhere : Public-Private Partnerships

Who benefits from Public Private Partnerships?

For public health campaigns less and less money is available: childhood vaccinating campaigns, as well as campaigns against malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and sleeping sickness all come to a temporary halt. The concept of the public private partnerships (PPP) is meant to end this dreadful state of affairs. In response to an appeal made by the World Health Organization (WHO) generous donations have been made by pharmaceutical companies and foundations to finance public health issues. The figures seem a success: In 2000/2001 the WHO had a budget of US$ 958 million of which US$ 100 million came from the industry and 300 US$ million from foundations. In many fields WHO’s own funds seem very small compared to the money provided by the industry. For example, in the period 1998/99 the WHO had only some US$ 29 million at its disposal for its control programme concerning tropical diseases (TDR), and for its tuberculosis programme it only had a budget of US$ 7 million. In comparison to this, Pfizer supported the International Trachom Initiative (ITI) with US$ 60 million over 2 years, and Bristol-Meyers Squibb donated 100 US$ million to the AIDS programme “Save the Future”. The Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) has a volume of more than 1 US$ billion, with the lion’s share of US$ 750 million coming from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Also for the Global Fund fighting against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation promised to participate for the amount of US$ 100 million.

The fact that transnational groups finance humanitarian programmes on a large scale cannot remain without any consequences in terms of social policy. BUKO Pharma-Kampagne examines so-called public private “partnerships", as, for example, the Global Aids Fund, and ensures transparency. We make crucial points public:

Are public private partnerships really partnerships with equal rights, just as their name suggests it?
How strong is the influence of private sponsors on management and organisational structures as well as on the transparency and the orientation of the programmes?
What happens with those aid structures already existing ?

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