Article on the topic where should the poor go
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While poverty continues to expand in Middle-Income Countries, donors with increasingly constrained foreign assistance budgets, are focusing more and more on Low Income Countries. Funding is moving in one direction and poverty is moving in another.
The Global Fund, for example, uses an eligibility and prioritization policy that’s based on World Bank income classification. Under current policy, a country classified as Low Income has to match at least 5% of Global Fund grants whereas a Middle Income Country has to match at least 20%. For a country like Lesotho, which just graduated into Middle Income status (GNI per person is $1,220, which is $195 over the level for LICs), their “reward” is less Global Fund support. Even the World Bank follows this pattern, with access to its International Development Association grants or low-interest loans limited to low income countries. GAVI, which helps support child immunization programs, restricts its funding to countries with GNI per capita below $1,520.
It’s not just the big funders: industry also uses country income levels to determine access to concessionary prices for key health products through “tiered pricing” arrangements. When drug and vaccine manufacturers give deals on their products, they want them to go only to poor people – and that usually means access is limited to poor countries. In a recent report, Médecins Sans Frontières found: “…middle-income countries are no longer offered standardized price discounts by originator [pharmaceutical] companies, forcing them to negotiate ARV price reductions on a case-by-case basis. Some ground has been lost, as middle income countries are once again paying exorbitant prices for the newest drugs.”