This Senate resolution honors Dr. Paul Farmer and says the United States should adopt a 21st-century global health solidarity strategy. The resolution describes large, preventable health burdens in low- and lower-middle income countries and recommends actions to reduce those deaths. It calls for "accompaniment" — local, long-term investment in national public health systems using Dr. Farmer's "Five S's": staff, space, stuff, systems, and social support. It also asks the U.S. to fund research and development for neglected diseases and to make resulting technologies available as global public goods. The resolution urges increasing annual global health spending to $125,000,000,000, supports coordinated multilateral public investment with shared governance, and prioritizes vulnerable groups such as people living in poverty, women, and children. It recommends measures to stop economic harms that drain resources from developing countries, including debt cancellation, democratizing major global institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO), a U.N. convention on tax, support for global labor rights, and new indicators of progress beyond GDP. Finally, it states a duty for the Federal Government to issue reparations for the harms of slavery, colonialism/imperialism, and disproportionate responsibility for climate change, following establishment of a commission similar to H.R. 40.
This is a "sense of the Senate" resolution. It expresses the Senate sponsors' views and recommends actions but does not itself create new legal rights or appropriate funding. It may guide future legislation, diplomatic efforts, or agency priorities if senators or the executive branch act on its recommendations. Status: referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The resolution includes several spending references: it calls for increasing annual global health spending to $125,000,000,000 and cites Lancet Commission figures that low- and lower-middle income countries need roughly $75,000,000,000 and $293,000,000,000 (2016 dollars) respectively to prevent most avertable deaths and reach essential universal health coverage. It also notes that 98 percent of the $1,500,000,000,000 in annual health spending in aid-eligible low- and middle-income countries is mobilized domestically, with only 2 percent from overseas development assistance. The resolution itself does not appropriate money. No publicly available information on the total cost of the reparations measures or how they would be funded.
Supporters, as reflected in the text, say strong U.S. leadership and new global solidarity approaches can end many unnecessary deaths, strengthen fragile health systems, make essential medicines and vaccines available to the poor, and correct economic structures that drain resources from developing countries. They argue that targeted investments in the Five S's, coordinated multilateral funding, debt relief, fairer global institutions, and accessible research outputs will improve health equity and global pandemic preparedness.
No publicly available information.