Failed "scheme".(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)

The question posed to Joe Cerrell, Helene Gayle and J. Stephen Morrison, and Tore Godal, "Is the Global Health System Broken?" (December 2007), assumes that a "system" exists. At best, the current global health delivery efforts can be labeled a sporadic, chaotic, and inadequate scheme. A scheme can't be broken ... but it can fail. And this one does, costing millions of lives--mostly those of children--a year.

It is admirable that these four prestigious minds are admitting early on that we are off track for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that are centered on health, but none offered a fail-safe way to generate adequate resources in time to achieve the targeted goals. The most hopeful sign is that these and other global experts now see achieving global health goals as a national security priority.

All the MDGs are measurable, affordable, and achievable by 2015 if the financial means are made available. In this regard, political will is far more important than market forces. Urgent, vital health needs for poor people do not, by themselves, lead to rapid or adequate supply--not ...