He is a danger especially to women:
Under beleaguered President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the World Bank may be scaling back its long-standing support for family planning, which many countries consider essential to women's health and the fight against AIDS.
In an internal e-mail, the bank's team leader for Madagascar indicated that one of two managing directors appointed by Wolfowitz ordered the removal of all references to family planning from a document laying out strategy for the African nation. And a draft of the bank's long-term health program strategy overseen by the same official makes almost no mention of family planning, suggesting a wider rollback may be underway.
Imagine that you are a woman in subsaharan Africa, with 5 kids, and your family income is $2 a day. In addition you have HIV and you are pregnant. You look with foreboding at the prospect of having another child. How would you feed it? And if the child is infected with HIV where would you get medicine? It's almost impossible to get medicine for yourself. What would you do with another HIV sufferer to take care of?
You did not want to get pregnant. You had no idea that there was a way to prevent it. Maybe you heard rumors about birth control, but the whole idea was preposterous to you. You are stuck with miserable living conditions, forced into another pregnancy and close to despair.
Enter the World Bank as savior. Up to now it has been offering family planning services to avoid such tragedies you have been imagining. The article refered to above says:
The current policy paper refers to family planning at least 23 times, repeatedly identifying it as a fundamental tool for tackling poverty and disease.
However, Bush has different ideas. As soon as he got into office, he cut all foreign-aid funds for contraceptives, birth control and family planning. Probably, when he appointed Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank the president expected him to cut all family planning services performed by the World Bank as well. Wolfowitz did not let the president down. But he let down all the poor people in poor countries.
Like George W. Bush, Paul D. Wolfowitz is a danger to the health and economy of poor countries. He should resign.
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