MSF Ideas and Opinions

The following is a response to "Aiding and Abetting? The Limits of Humanitarian Aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," by Jason Cone, MSF-USA Executive director, from Larry Pantirer, a member of MSF-USA's Board of Advisors. The views expressed are his own:

by Fabrice Weissman

This essay originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Criminal Justice Ethics, which is published on behalf of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York. It came out of a workshop that was held in New York City in January 2010 entitled The Ethics of Intervention/Protection: Contending Approaches. The workshop was organized by the Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) and the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics (ICJE).

Over 1 billion people are infected with one of the 14 diseases defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). These are the most common infections in the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day and affects those often marginalized and forgotten by governments, left to suffer in silence. NTDs are diverse but all cause severe disability or death, and bring a major economic burden on endemic countries.

In this interview, Dr. Fournier describes why a global response to the H1N1 pandemic must in the short term focus not only on vaccination, but on reducing mortality worldwide by emphasizing the identification and treatment of the most severe cases; and argues why access to the vaccine in the future must be based on medical need, not purchasing power of wealthy countries.