The Plan To Put Health At The Heart Of The Global Economy
For decades, finance ministers have viewed health spending the way homeowners view leaky roofs: a necessary nuisance, a cost to be minimized. Hospitals consume budgets. Doctors require salaries. Medicines drain foreign exchange. When economies tighten, health is often among the first cabinet ministers sent home with a smaller envelope.
But a quiet revolution might be underway in Geneva, and it threatens to flip this logic on its head.
This May, when Member States gather for the 79th World Health Assembly, they will be asked to approve something unprecedented: a formal strategy declaring that health is not a cost at all.