5 Lives: How a Financial Transaction Tax Could Support Global Health

"5 Lives" are the stories of people that MSF works with every day who health and lives often hand on access to a simple medical intervention.

These personal experiences are a snapshot of the unnecessary suffering MSF medical staff see first-hand daily in places where people can't get adequate medical care and that could be avoided with proper, sustainable funding and investment. We're doctors and nurses, not bankers, but we can see how investing in real futures - like the futures of the people profiled here - will transform the lives of those made vulnerable through illness, and create a strong foundation for their families and their communities to build on.

That's why MSF supports calls to direct a small but permanent portion of a new financial transaction tax (FTT), proposed by some governments, to meet global health needs. A regular stream of funding would help provide some funding to address unchecked health crises around the world.

The accounts told here of individuals that have benefitted from a medical intervention, might be just a drop in the ocean, but what we see in their story is the possibility of an amazing impact if the interventions that saved their lives could be made available on a wider scale. An allocation of proceeds from the FTT for global health could help make that possible.