"International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans were associated with a significant increase in death rates from tuberculosis (TB) in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern European countries between 1992 and 2002, study findings indicate.

David Stuckler (University of Cambridge, UK) and colleagues also report in the journal PLoS Medicine that IMF loans were linked to a 13.9% increase in the number of new cases of TB per year and a 13.2% increase per year in the total number of people with the disease.

"According to the IMF, the objective of these programs is to achieve macroeconomic stability and economic growth", Stuckler and team note, but a recent report from the Center for Global Development has suggested that countries receiving IMF loans may constrain spending on health and social services.

However, it has not been clear until now whether IMF loans are actually linked to changes in measurable health outcomes.

Stuckler and team used data on health outcomes from the World Health Organization (WHO), and IMF data from the World Bank's World Development Indicators to create models to test whether entry to, and exit from, IMF programs was linked with changes in TB outcomes in these countries.

The researchers also tried to understand what mechanisms might be responsible for the increase in TB death rates that they found. Using a separate set of models, the authors calculated that IMF programs are linked to an 8% drop in government spending, a 7% drop in the number of doctors per head, and lower coverage of TB control using the 'directly observed treatment, short course' strategy recommended by the WHO.

Stuckler and team say these findings suggest that countries receiving IMF loans make cutbacks in their TB control infrastructure, and that this might be responsible for the increase in TB death rates.

^{http://www.medwire-news.md/48/76529/Respiratory/Link_found_between_IMF_loans_and_increased_TB_death_rates.html}