Global spending on weapons would defeat poverty, hunger and disease

At the beginning of our century, economist Jeffrey Sachs estimated that the world would need to invest US$175 billion per year, for 20 years, to eradicate poverty. If it had been adopted, his proposal would have taken the planet on a different path.

If it were for health…

Diseases that plague humanity would also finally have an answer. In 2020, UNAids (UN program against the disease) launched a program to allow US$29 billion to be invested by 2025 to definitively reverse the trajectory of AIDS in poor and middle-income countries. A crumb compared to the prices of bombs and missiles.

The international community also launched, in 2022, a plan to eradicate polio by 2026. To achieve this, it needs US$4.8 billion.

Even in the case of Covid-19, resources would have been decisive, while the war over vaccines created what Africans called a health “apartheid” in the world. During the most critical moments of the pandemic, the World Bank estimated that US$50 billion would be needed to vaccinate the entire world against Covid-19.

In the first three years of the pandemic, governments allocated more than US$105 billion to purchase vaccines and therapies. By 2025, the bill will reach US$157 billion, according to IQVIA Holdings Inc, a company that operates in information technology, health and clinical research.