The PHM-North America’s Mapping Privatisation Project joined 60 organizations and experts to demand that the World Bank Board investigate its International Finance Corporation (IFC)-funded hospitals implicated in denying emergency care, detaining patients, and exploiting staff. While the World Bank’s stated mission is to fight poverty, the IFC is funding high-end unaffordable hospitals & exacerbating inequality.

From Bloomberg:

In stories published this year, Bloomberg found patients at World Bank-funded hospitals who said they were denied emergency medical care and held because of unpaid bills. The reporting also showed how whistleblowers raised alarms about what they called pressure to boost revenue by performing unnecessary procedures at one hospital in Kenya. Officials at another hospital in Pakistan alleged that financial reports were falsified. The hospital companies involved denied abusing patients or prioritizing profit over care.

In addition to calling for an investigation, the letter demands that the IFC “cease any new funding to for-profit private healthcare providers either directly or via Financial Intermediaries, including private equity funds.”