IOM urges U.S. to boost funding in developing world

The U.S. should increase its commitment to improving the health of developing nations and boost funding by $15 billion per year by 2012 to achieve that goal, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The report, The U.S. Commitment to Global Health: Recommendations for the Public and Private Sectors,

urges U.S. agencies and other groups to concentrate on five objectives: increasing the use of existing interventions to achieve significant health gains; generating and sharing knowledge to address prevalent health problems in disadvantaged countries; investing in people, institutions and "capacity building" with global partners; increasing both the quantity and quality of U.S. financial commitments to global health; and engaging in respectable partnerships to improve global health.

Of the $15 billion annual increase, the committee recommended that $13 billion be spent on the health-related millennium goals of the United Nations—namely, the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis—while the other $2 billion should be used to target areas such as injuries and noncommunicable diseases, like heart disease, the committee recommended. Also, of the $13 billion, $3.4 billion should support programs in areas that have been severely underfunded, such as nutrition, family planning and reproductive health, and strengthening countries' healthcare systems.

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