COMMENT From Mr John McArthur.
Sir, William Easterly leaves an incorrect impression in his article "Human rights are the wrong basis for healthcare" (October 13). He suggests that foreign aid funding for Aids treatment somehow diverted health budgets away from other priorities at great human cost. The reality is that the global campaign for Aids treatment has been the leading edge of a much larger global scale-up of disease control in the past decade. In 2000 total worldwide foreign aid for global health and population was approximately $3bn. The rich countries had not spent a penny on Aids treatment in the developing world, and only around 10,000 people were on treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2007 the comparable aid total had tripled to $10bn and rising, spurred by the successes of Aids treatment and other breakthroughs against malaria, tuberculosis, measles, worm infections and other fatal and debilitating conditions.
