Patients held hostage at a hospital until extortionate bills are paid. A badly hurt child, knocked unconscious in a traffic accident, denie...

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Hi John,
Patients held hostage at a hospital until extortionate bills are paid. A badly hurt child, knocked unconscious in a traffic accident, denied treatment. A patient who died of Covid-19 leaving a medical bill amounting to over $100,000.

These horrifying stories from Kenya, India and Uganda come from a recent Oxfam report detailing the nightmare of life when your health is dependent on private medicine. What’s worse, all of these cases come from hospitals supported by British aid money.

The Conservative government has already slashed the aid budget. They can’t be allowed to hijack what’s left and give it to private companies instead of what we know is the best way to fight poverty: public healthcare.

Take action to end this abuse of ‘UK aid’ ([link removed])
Oxfam detail many more stories of patients denied care or given unnecessary procedures, facing unaffordable childbirth costs, and being pushed into poverty.

One patient, Eva from Odisha in India, was given a $36,000 bill for her mother’s hospital treatment. She said the hospital refused to accept her family’s government health insurance card and persuaded her to take out private health insurance, which then failed to reimburse her for costs amounting to more than seven years of her and her father’s combined income.

She used her life savings, borrowed from friends, took out a loan and sold the small family plot of land. “The doctor has already killed all my hopes and aspirations in life,” she said. “I’m psychologically damaged; my family life has collapsed; my career is damaged. What else is there to fear?”

At Global Justice Now we have campaigned for years against this sort of misuse of aid. Much of it flows through British International Investment, formerly known as the CDC Group, a company owned by the British government and used to channel development funds to private sector initiatives abroad. Last year Liz Truss gave it an expanded role in the government’s plan for international development.

Yet much of British International Investment’s funds flow through third party investment managers, often domiciled in tax havens. Its actual impact on fighting poverty is barely measured, let alone demonstrated. Can you join me in writing to the international development minister today?
Take action now ([link removed])
One particularly troubling example of such an investment is the Nairobi Women’s Hospital (NWH) in Kenya, which had a policy of detaining patients, including babies, and refusing to release the bodies of people who have died until bills have been paid. Leaked WhatsApp conversations between staff in 2020 exposed a culture, in the words of one commentator, more akin to a trading floor than a hospital, with hourly pressure on staff to increase admissions and delay discharges to meet income targets.

The current owners of the hospital claim the situation has now improved. But this misses the central point. Healthcare improves dramatically when public, universal health services exist. Aid should build those services and make them sustainable, not compete against and erode public systems.

We need to end this capture of the aid budget once and for all. Please take action today and call on the minister for international development, Andrew Mitchell, to stop supporting all direct and indirect funding to for-profit healthcare providers, and take action to remedy the damage already caused by these investments.
Write to the international development minister today ([link removed])
Thanks for everything you do to support our campaigns.

Best wishes,
Nick Dearden
Director, Global Justice Now

Notes
1. UK aid should not fund private hospitals in developing countries, says Oxfam ([link removed]) , Guardian, 26 June 2023
2. Sick Development: How rich-country government and World Bank funding to for-profit private hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped ([link removed]) , Oxfam, June 2023
3. Half a billion in aid for private healthcare condemned by campaigners ([link removed]) , Global Justice Now, January 2021
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