Sanjay Basu – författare

The Body Economic is the first, agenda-shaping, look at the human costs of financial crisis - the culmination of ten years' work by two pioneering researchers - Sanjay Basu and David StucklerThe global financial crisis has had a seismic impact upon the wealth of nations. But we have little sense of how it affects one of the most fundamental issues of all: our physical and mental health.The Body Economic puts forward a radical proposition. Austerity, it argues, is seriously bad for your health. We can prevent financial crises from becoming epidemics, but to do so, we must acknowledge what the hard data tells us: that, throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Even amid the worst economic disasters, negative public health effects are not inevitable: it's how communities respond to challenges of debt and market turmoil that counts. Now and for generations to come, our commitment to the building of fairer, more equal societies will determine the health of our body economic.'Explosive ... powerful. Backed by a decade of research, and based on reams of publicly available data' Guardian 'A powerful indictment of the unnecessary suffering and rising mortality rates associated with austerity policies unsoftened by remedial social programmes' Financial TimesDavid Stuckler is a Senior Research Leader at Oxford University. He has published over one-hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles in major journals on the subjects of economics and global health, and his work has featured on the cover of The New York Times and The Economist, as well as on BBC, NPR, and CNN, among others. Sanjay Basu is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University. He has worked with Oxfam International and is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. His work has featured in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and he has written over 80 peer-reviewed articles.

The global financial crisis has had a seismic impact upon the wealth of nations. But we have little sense of how it affects one of the most fundamental issues of all: our physical and mental health.This highly significant new book, based on the authors' own groundbreaking research, looks at the daily lives of people affected by financial crisis, from the Great Depression of the 1930s, to post-communist Russia, to the US foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s. Why, it asks, did Sweden experience a fall in suicides during its banking crisis? What triggered a mosquito-borne epidemic in California in 2007? What caused 10 million Russian men to 'disappear' in the 1990s? Why is Greece experiencing rocketing HIV rates? And how did the health of Americans actually improve during the catastrophic crisis of the 1930s? The conclusions it draws are both surprising and compelling: remarkably, when faced with similar crises, the health of some societies - like Iceland - improves, while that of others, such as Greece, deteriorates. Even amid the worst economic disasters, negative public health effects are not inevitable: it's how communities respond to challenges of debt and market turmoil that counts. The Body Economic puts forward a radical proposition. Austerity, it argues, is seriously bad for your health. We can prevent financial crises from becoming epidemics, but to do so, we must acknowledge what the hard data tells us: that, throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Now and for generations to come, our commitment to the building of fairer, more equal societies will determine the health of our body economic.

Harte Fakten belegen die traurige Wahrheit und einen eindeutigen Zusammenhang:Nachdem in Griechenland der Gesundheitsetat 2009 von 24 auf 16 Milliarden Euro gekürzt wurde, stieg die Kindersterblichkeit um 40 Prozent und allein zwischen Januar und Mai 2011 die Zahl der HIV-Neuinfektionen um 52 Prozent. Das gerade vom Krisengewinnler Deutschland aufgezwungene europaweite Sparregime hat dramatische Folgen, denn:»Was ist der Unterschied zwischen dem IWF und einem Vampir? Der Vampir hört auf, einem das Blut auszusaugen, wenn man tot ist.«Hinter den aufrüttelnden Zahlen, den aktuellen sowie historischen Daten und erstaunlichen Grafiken stehen die Schicksale einzelner Menschen, die von den Autoren in drastischen Geschichten porträtiert werden. Aber die beiden Medizinethiker bieten auch Raum für Hoffnung, denn sie zeigen ermutigende Beispiele wirtschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Erholung, nachdem kreative, überraschende politische Lösungen für schwierige Bedingungen gefunden wurden. Nach fünf Jahren Rezession ist es Zeit für eine Kehrtwende in der Krisenpolitik – für eine gesündere Zukunft!