November 16, 2001

Before a gathering on November 2 of nearly 400 state department officers, international health NGO representatives and Congressional legislators, including Senator Bill Frist (R-Tennessee), Dean Barry Bloom gave a briefing on the "Political and Economic Implications of Infectious Diseases." The talk was part of a Conference on Global Infectious Diseases and US Foreign Policy at the US Department of State in Washington, DC.

In his presentation, Bloom discussed the global burden of mortality and healthy years of life lost from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and the economic and political impacts of the diseases and their interventions.

Infectious diseases account for more than 30 percent of total global deaths–and nearly 70 percent of deaths in Africa, he told the gathering. Each year, more than eight million new cases of tuberculosis are identified, and two million people die of the disease. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is present in 72 countries.

Malaria kills between 1/2 million and more than two million people each year, including a disproportionately large number of African children. Resistance to antimalarial drugs has accelerated. It took the malaria parasite 40 years to become resistant to quinine, 16 years to chloroquine in the 1950s and ‘60s and just six months to atovaquone in the 1990s. More than 30 countries with intensive malaria lagged by 1.3 percent per year in economic growth behind countries without the disease.

World wide, more than 36 million people live with AIDS, and 25 million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking a toll on the people and the economy of hard-hit countries.

Whereas a standard economic model argues that economic growth promotes health, said Bloom, a new economic model suggests causality moves in both directions between health and economic improvements.

Reduced years of healthy life expectancy and productivity constitute these diseases’ direct impact on economic growth, Bloom explained, adding that each 10 percent increase in life expectancy at birth is associated with a 0.3 to 0.4 percent rise in a country’s economic growth when other growth factors remain constant.

Bloom also discussed the Global Program for AIDS Care and Treatment (Global PACT) and a proposed agenda for the Global Fund for AIDS and Health, based on a meeting of experts at HSPH in September that recommended linking treatment and prevention efforts in poor countries.

Visit http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/facres/bloom.html to view Bloom’s slide presentation.