Editor—We welcome the editorial on the International Poverty and Health Network and will encourage Medact to participate in the work of the network.1
Medact is an organisation of health professionals who are concerned about major threats to health, such as violent conflict, poverty, and environmental degradation. To the editorial's otherwise comprehensive list of objectives we would like to add one which we regard as vital: the elimination of war.
War and the preparation for it are both the causes and the results of poverty.2 This is most obvious in countries such as Afghanistan and in many countries in Africa, notably Angola, which have been in the midst of war for decades; at the same time these are among some of the world's poorest countries. Many poor countries spend more on their military than on health and education combined.3 We welcome last year's cancellation of the debts of the 25 poorest countries announced by Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, who also specified that the money saved should not be spent on arms. Even more recently, the retiring president of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus, called on the developed world to stop exporting arms to poorer countries.
The adverse effects that spending on arms has on health care are evident also in developed countries: the NHS underwent its annual winter turmoil and there has recently been a study of the regional inequalities that exist in health care in the United Kingdom.4
Of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union, the United Kingdom is among those countries that spend the most on their military, and it is likely to remain so if plans to spend £34bn on the Eurofighter and £15bn on new aircraft carriers go ahead.3 The United Kingdom is also among the countries that spend the least on health care. Yet Lord Robertson at NATO, Javier Solana at the European Union, and sources leaking information from the Ministry of Defence are all pressing for increases in the defence budget. We hope that they do not find themselves in an overstretched NHS accident and emergency department late on a winter's night—or do we?
References
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