The health of the world’s poor is under severe threat from the global economic crisis, yet recent breakthroughs in technology, if properly applied, can surmount those threats. As in so much of our world today, we are in a race between economic crisis and social disintegration on the one hand, and rising, unharnessed technological capacity on the other. The biggest challenge is, therefore, operational: how to engage the public, private and social sectors as partners to scale up life-saving technologies.

There is little mystery about the threat. Poor countries are caught in the global economic and environmental maelstrom. While the poor are not losing their stock market portfolios in the current crash, they are suffering in countless other ways: export prices of many commodities, such as copper, rubber and tin, have collapsed; export volumes are down; banks are yanking their loans from emerging market economies; remittances are plummeting; expatriate workers are being sent home; long-planned foreign investments are being suspended; and promised foreign aid is being slashed.