Economics of healthcare

For just us $101 billion a year in medical research and treatments, 8,000,000 lives can be saved annually in the developing world. Moreover, us $186 billion a year in world income now lost to illness can be recovered. So concludes a report on economics and health published recently by the World Health Organisation (who). The committee that drafted the report studied how a combination of foreign aid and governments' funds could improve the health of people in emerging economies. "There is no way diseases like AIDS and malaria can be combated in developing world without international assistance," said Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University, who led the committee (www.nytimes.com, January 1, 2002).