Could IMF Loans Be Causing TB Deaths?
Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 05:34PM
Gangster Government

The International Monetary Fund this week denounced a study that links its loans to a rise in deaths from tuberculosis (TB) in the former republics of the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe.

"This is just phony science," IMF spokesperson William Murray told The New York Times about research that cites IMF loans as a possible reason that TB rates soared in 21 post-Soviet countries after the Berlin Wall crumbled.

University of Cambridge and Yale University researchers reported in the journal PLoS Medicine that the countries, which received IMF money between 1989 and 2005, experienced, on average, a 16 percent spike in TB death rates after accepting the financial aid followed by a 30.7 percent dip after the loans were paid off.

It is well-known that TB rates in these countries rose after the fall of communism. Less clear was why countries saw such different disease outcomes. The death rate doubled from 6.2 to 13.3 per 100,000 people between 1991 and 2002 in the post-Soviet republics. Mortality in the former communist states of eastern Europe, however, slid from 5.6 to 3.2 per 100,000, or about 40 percent.

One difference between the two groups was the amount of IMF debt incurred: the former Soviet nations had an average debt of $850 million and took an average of 10.3 years to pay back the loans. The eastern European countries incurred less debt—$270 million on average—which they repaid in an average of 5.5 years.

The researchers found that the size of the loan was proportional to the mortality rate.


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