This Oxfam organised expert panel event will explore fundamental questions about the appropriateness of public funds mandated to fight poverty and achieve global development goals being used to finance for-profit private healthcare in the Global South. With the World Bank Group leading the charge to ‘crowd in’ private finance for health, including via greater investment in private equity funds, panellists will discuss: what is the impact of this approach on national health systems, healthcare inequality and patient rights? Who really benefits? And what can we learn from the increasing financialisation of health and social care from high income countries like the United States of America?

Panellists will include Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson and author of ‘These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – and Wrecks – America’; National co-convenor of People’s Health Movement–India and Senior consultant for Indian civil society organisation SATHI Dr Abhay Shukla; and Oxfam’s Global Health Lead Anna Marriott, author of Oxfam’s report on development financing and private healthcare, Sick Development. Panellists will be joined by a representative from the World Bank Group, still to be confirmed.