A healthy return on global investment

Yet, argues Dr Devi Sridhar, international donors neglect these basic needs while putting huge resources into diseases such as HIV/Aids and malaria. Dr Sridhar is the founding director of the Global Health Governance Project (GHGP), part of the Global Economic Governance Programme at University College directed by Dr Ngaire Woods.

The project brings together social and medical scientists to study where aid for health care comes from and where it goes, how to assess the real health needs of developing nations, and how far global actors, rather than the developing countries themselves, are setting the spending priorities.

Dr Sridhar’s studies in India examine why strategies to address childhood malnutrition have failed so badly. ‘Interventions seem to reflect what is “fashionable” in development circles, not necessarily what is evidence-based’, she says. ‘What seems to occur is “policy-based evidence-making”.’ She argues that within major global health institutions, such as the World Bank, there is still a startling lack of attention to the needs and concerns of local communities and the social realities of village life. These include the high work burden shouldered by women, gender inequality within the household and the lack of access to safe water and sanitation.

‘The politics of global health is a huge field, and there’s really very little research’, says Dr Sridhar. ‘That’s where we see Oxford making a contribution.’