Day 2 pre RM

Waking up was unusually hard this morning. Not because I partied like no tomorrow yesterday, maybe just an accumulation of fatigue over the last few days of machu pichu trekking and endless hour of long distance transportation.
This morning we tackled the stakeholders of NCDs. What I found particularly interesting is the analysis of privately owned charity foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Foundation. I guess I always thought of such foundations as a very generous gesture and did not see any negative aspect to it. I never thought about the fact that such donations never takes into consideration of the real and most urgent need of the country in need. Nor does it consult any third party committees, such as the UN, for the most efficient way to donate. Also, I thought it was quite clever when Gen pointed out that if these multibillionaires were taxed more, then governments would have more public fund to address more efficiently certain problems without having to apply for private charity funds.
I’m now one step closer to achieve one of my objectives. After talking with delegates of Columbia and Equator, I realized that one of the major problems in healthcare of the Americas is the existence of two tier system. As explained by the Colombian delegate, private insurance company runs health care in Colombia along with the government. This resulted in development of better equipped and staffed private clinics affiliated with these insurance companies and the degradation of the public health sector. This phenomenon is also seen in Equator but to a less extent since the government created legal barriers very recently to address the problem. In both cases, this lead to a greater difference in health state between the rich and the poor. Where the rich can afford the best of health care, the poor are left with a dysfunctional and corrupt public sector. This is, to a certain extent, what is happening in the USA.