(Press-News.org) Partnerships with multinational companies in child health programmes can work to help save lives, write the co-founders of charity ColaLife in The BMJ this week. But an academic argues that connections between multinational companies and child health projects present an ethical minefield.
ColaLife, a charity formed by British couple Simon and Jane Berry, worked with Coca-Cola to learn about the distribution channels the company uses in developing countries. With this knowledge, they devised a system to ensure life saving treatments reach children with diarrhoea in remote parts of Zambia.
Within a year, their programme sold to community retailers 26,000 Kit Yamoyos, which contain oral rehydration salts (ORS) and zinc treatment for diarrhoea. Treatment rates increased from less than 1% to 45%, a "prize for collaboration", write the authors. Mean distance to ORS access was reduced from 7.3 km to 2.4 km.
They say that connections with companies, such as theirs with Coca-Cola, can combine the "best of what each partner has to offer--knowledge, expertise, reach, and resources--and bring them together in pursuit of collective development objectives."
Kit Yamoyos are now manufactured in Zambia and cost about $1 from local retailers.
"With treatment rates still at less than 1%, diarrhoea is still the second biggest killer of children aged under 5. So, the question is, do we leave them without access to proved treatment? Or do we try something different and manage the risks of the ethical minefield?" they ask.
But companies are in business to sell products, not to promote child health, and the connection with multinationals such as Coca-Cola presents an "ethical minefield", argues Nick Spencer, Professor of Child Health at the University of Warwick, UK.
Although Kit Yamoyo has no obvious connection to Coca-Cola at retail level, Spencer argues that the charity provides legitimacy to a company that sells some unhealthy products for huge profit while contributing to the rise of obesity and diabetes.
He notes Coca-Cola is ranked 11th in tax avoidance among the US multinational companies compared in a report by the US Senate published in 2012.
ColaLife also counts the alcoholic drinks giant SABMiller, Coke's bottlers in Zambia, as a partner. SABMiller has been accused of structuring its business to avoid paying tax in Africa, something it completely refutes.
If such tax avoidance were to occur in countries like Zambia, Spencer hypothesises, this could lead to a loss of tax revenue that could instead help the government's distribution of free ORS and zinc and fundamental public health measures such as infrastructure for water and sanitation.
What is really needed is the political will, he says, to improve these public health measures to prevent recurrent episodes of diarrhoea among other health problems in children as well as improving free access to life saving medications.
He cites several successful examples of government funded health in poor countries without any need for the involvement of multinational companies.
He concludes: "The challenge, in my view, is to find ways of working with governments to tackle problems such as distribution channels and infrastructural improvement."
INFORMATION:
Up to 22 percent of surgical patients experience unexpected complications and must be readmitted for post-operative care. A study led by the University of Utah suggests that returning to the same hospital is important for recovery. Readmission to a different hospital was associated with a 26 percent increased risk for dying within 90 days.
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In The BMJ this week, two doctors criticize Australia for passing legislation that may be used to silence doctors working with asylum seekers.
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Dr. David Berger at Broome Hospital in Western Australia, argues that the only reason to suppress doctors in this way, 'is to avoid embarrassing revelations ...
Two Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) physicians who participated in the international response to the major earthquakes that hit Nepal in April and May each describe their experiences in Perspectives articles receiving Online First publication today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Renee Salas, MD, MS, was already in Nepal working at a Himalayan Rescue Association clinic in the remote village of Pheriche when the first 7.8 magnitude quake struck on April 25. As she describes in her article "Humanity, Teamwork and Art in Post-Earthquake Nepal," while the immediate ...
WHAT:
Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a new immune disorder--DOCK2 deficiency--named after the mutated gene responsible for the disease. An international team of collaborators studied five children, four boys and one girl, from different ethnic backgrounds who had experienced debilitating infections early in life. The children were diagnosed with combined immunodeficiency (CID), which refers to a group of inherited disorders distinguished by defects in immune system cells called T cells. CIDs also may affect other cells of ...
WASHINGTON, June 17 --- The value of the tax exemption provided to non-profit private hospitals in return for 'charity care and community benefit' nearly doubled over a nine-year period, climbing from an estimated $12.6 billion in 2002 to $24.6 billion dollars by 2011, according to a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by researchers at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University.
This growth in the value of the tax exemption underscores taxpayer interest in how hospitals allocate their community ...
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Pediatric neurologist and NF specialist Nikolas Mata-Machado, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center, ...
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(New York, June 17, 2015) Melanoma patients with high levels of a protein that controls the expression of pro-growth genes are less likely to survive, according to a study led by researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online in the journal Molecular Cell.
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Men with an elevated, genetically inherited risk for prostate cancer could be routinely identified with a simple blood or urine test, scientists at UC San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente Northern California have concluded, potentially paving the way to better or earlier diagnosis.
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