In the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, visiting fellow Tom Bollyky and coauthor Lawrence Gostin make the case (gated) for increased U.S. engagement on global tobacco control. Tobacco use is currently the leading cause of disease and premature death in the world, tallying more deaths than HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria combined.
The outcome of today’s G20 summit has become even more critical for developing countries as the World Bank revised the 2009 forecast for GDP growth in the developing world to 2.1 percent down from 5.8 percent in 2008. But a draft copy of the G20 communiqué published by the Financial Times could go farther in its commitment to help the world’s most vulnerable countries.
As my colleague David Roodman pointed out, the financial crisis does not bode well for foreign aid to poor countries. In the early 1990s, aid from the four donor countries experiencing financial crises dropped between 10 and 62 percent in the aftermath.
