The story beneath

Covering the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Ministerial Forum in Bamako, Mali, did not come without its challenges. The conference was called largely to push the interests of huge international organisations, like World Bank, and promote investment in health systems research that will ultimately benefit the global economy.

Critics and nay-sayers were not invited to the conference, and there was little time allocated for Q&As during which journalists and delegates can ask pertinent questions. Needless to say, this made a journalist’s job of providing balanced coverage extremely difficult.

While WHO and Worldbank used the Bamako meeting to lament a huge health systems knowledge gap in Africa, critics say it is not African governments who lack knowledge, but the strategy of international institutions, such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to undermine Africa's health through the policies they have imposed for the past two decades.

What basically happens is that World Bank and IMF use poor and highly indebted African countries’ dependency on their loans to control economic policy-making and have pushed African governments towards greater economic integration in international markets at the expense of social services and long-term development priorities.

Let’s hope the story beneath also finds its way into the international media…