Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg | Original article by Bloomberg here

SID joins more than 50 human rights organizations, nonprofits and international development experts calling on the World Bank to investigate its health-care investments in Africa and Asia, citing Bloomberg News articles about alleged patient abuses.

In stories published this year, Bloomberg found patients at World Bank-funded hospitals who said they were denied emergency medical care and held because of unpaid bills. The reporting also showed how whistleblowers raised alarms about what they called pressure to boost revenue by performing unnecessary procedures at one hospital in Kenya. Officials at another hospital in Pakistan alleged that financial reports were falsified. The hospital companies involved denied abusing patients or prioritizing profit over care.

Oxfam International, Bank Information Center, a Kenyan medical practitioners union and 57 other organizations and experts, urged the International Finance Corp., the arm of the World Bank that invests in businesses, to freeze any additional funding to for-profit health-care providers. They also called for an investigation by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, an independent office responsible for addressing complaints from people impacted by IFC projects. And they asked the bank to put in place procedures to ensure that those harmed by its investments could seek effective remedies.

In a letter sent to the bank’s president and board of executive directors on Friday, the groups wrote that Bloomberg’s findings “corroborate years of evidence and concerns presented to the World Bank Board regarding the grievous harm caused by IFC’s direct and indirect healthcare investments to patients, workers and health systems. As the articles show, these issues are not isolated but rather recurring and systemic across several active IFC investments and in multiple jurisdictions.” The letter also cited reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that raised similar questions.

The IFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It previously told Bloomberg it has rigorous protocols in place for protecting patients and would tighten its appraisal and supervision process to address concerns.

 

↘ Read the full letter here.