BMJ  2005;330:972 (23 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7497.972

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Death on the road to international development

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We don't know much about her. All we know is that in 2003 a small Tanzanian girl died after having been run over by a truck, a truck belonging to a company managed by CDC (formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation, and now wholly owned by the Department for International Development of the UK government). According to CDC records the girl did not die at the scene, but "following poor care she died in the hospital 3dayslater."

CDC's mission is to create wealth in emerging markets, particularly poorer countries, by investing in "sustainable" private sector businesses. In 2003 CDC made a pretax profit of £45m ($85m; 65m), some £15.6m of which was made from its investment in Africa.

Last year I gave a lunchtime seminar on road safety to CDC managers. Before the seminar I was given a summary of the fatal "accidents" attributable to CDC managed businesses in 2003. . . . [Full text of this article]

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London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Ian.Roberts@lshtm.ac.uk

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