It is a week in which politicians are vying to stamp their mark on a reordered world financial system: a Bretton-Woods for the 21st century. So they would have it, at least.

As Gordon Brown said in his Lord Mayor’s Banquet Speech last Monday…

The IMF should be transformed with a renewed mandate that goes far beyond crisis management to crisis prevention – not only responsible in the manner of an independent central bank for the independent surveillance of the world economy but becoming its early warning system.

…

And today we also have the science and medicine to be the first generation to eradicate the preventable diseases of TB, polio, diptheria and malaria – and eventually to cure HIV and AIDS.

Problem.

LONDON (Reuters) – Austerity measures attached to International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans may have contributed to a resurgence in tuberculosis…

The study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine, found that countries participating in IMF programmes had seen tuberculosis death rates increase by at least 17 percent between 1991 and 2000 — equivalent to more than 100,000 additional deaths. About one million new cases were recorded during the same period.

PLoS Medicine: IMF programs and tuberculosis outcomes in post-communist countries.

Related links:
What Dominique said to Gordon – FT Westminster blog
G20: Concordia discors – FT Alphaville
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This entry was posted by Sam Jones on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 10:29 and is filed under Capital markets, People. Tagged with IMF. Edit this entry.