Devex CheckUp: A global health wish list for the Spring Meetings

Health may not be center stage at the World Bank Spring Meetings this week, but global health leaders still have their own expectations of international financial institutions. Unsurprisingly, many of them center on rethinking debt.

The United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS head Winnie Byanyima is looking for some concrete action on debt restructuring that would allow countries in the global south to stop channeling their finances into debt repayments and instead allow them to focus on shoring up their domestic health systems.

“The financial system, the taxation system, the whole multilateral system is not delivering equitably,” she said at a discussion Wednesday hosted by Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute, just down the street from the Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.