Stone Professor of International Trade Jeffrey D. Sachs '76 finds it alarming that the current aid flow for international health care is about $5 billion--spread between five billion poor people worldwide.

"Given how rich we are, more could be done," Sachs said.

As the newly appointed chair of the global Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), Sachs is now in a position to explore how to lessen gap between "the haves and the have-nots" and raise awareness about the importance of public heath in the international community.

"The Commission's task is enormous, but easily described: to help put global public health at the center of a new strategy of global economic development," Sachs wrote in an opinion piece he has submitted to newspapers.

Sachs, who will be jetting off to New Delhi this spring for an upcoming CMH meeting, said his colleagues will focus their two-year study on three main areas: possible economic benefits of health care investments, cost-effective intervention methods and the improvement of poor countries' access to medical technology.

He suggested canceling debts for the poorest countries as a possible option that CMH will investigate.

Sachs said there is also controversy surrounding what role the world's pharmaceutical companies should play in helping poorer countries.

Many believe that the companies have too much monopoly power and should offer lower costs to poorer patients as well as allot more funding and research toward drugs and vaccines for illnesses plaguing lesser-developed countries.