Food animals are considered as key reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the use of antibiotics in the food production industry having contributed to the actual global challenge of antibiotic resistance (ABR). There are no geographic boundaries to impede the worldwide spread of ABR. If preventive and containment measures are not applied locally, nationally and regionally, the limited interventions in one country, continent and for instance, in the developing world, could compromise the efficacy and endanger ABR containment policies implemented in other parts of the world, the best-managed high-resource countries included. Multifaceted, comprehensive, and integrated measures complying with the One Health approach are thus imperative to ensure food safety and security, effectively combat infectious diseases, curb the emergence and spread of ABR, and preserve the efficacy of antibiotics for future generations. The World Health Organisation, World Organisation for Animal Health, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation recommend implementing national action plans encompassing human, (food) animal, and environmental sectors to improve policies, interventions and activities that address the prevention and containment of ABR from farm-to-fork. This review covers (i) the origin of antibiotic resistance, (ii) pathways by which bacteria spread to humans from farm-to-fork, (iii) differences in levels of antibiotic resistance between developed and developing countries, and (iv) prevention and containment measures of antibiotic resistance in the food chain.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
An amendment to the TRIPS Agreement that aims to facilitate the access to affordable medicines has entered into force upon approval by two thirds of the WTO members. The amendment reflects the recognition by WTO Members of the need for the continued enhancement of global intellectual property rules to allow Members to systematically take measures to protect public health. The United Nations Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines has highlighted the importance of designing legislation that allows for quick, fair, predictable and implementable compulsory licenses for legitimate public health needs, and recommended WTO Members to revise the paragraph 6 system in order to find a solution that enables a swift and expedient export of pharmaceutical products produced under compulsory license. The South Centre stresses the continued importance for Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) to make full use of the special status they enjoy in not being required to adopt rules on patent protection and most other rules of the TRIPS Agreement, in order to build their technological capabilities and reduce obstacles to affordable access to medicines. The LDCs would not need, in this case, to make use of the system. Close attention will need to be paid to the design of national implementing legislations and the feedback from potential user entities of the system on any hurdles they may face that diminish interest in its use. The evaluation of the system must continue in the TRIPS Council. The South Centre offers to provide assistance to countries in examining national implementing legislations, and providing information to potential interested parties. Templates for facilitated implementation and meeting of conditions required under the system may be provided.
A protocol amending the WTO TRIPS Agreement that would enable developing countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector to import cheaper generic medicines produced under compulsory licencing came into force on Monday, 23 January. The annex to the protocol amending the TRIPS Agreement contains a new Article which contains five paragraphs on the obligations of exporting Members in relation to compulsory licences, AND the modification of obligations to the extent necessary to enable a pharmaceutical product produced or imported under a compulsory licence to other countries within a regional trade agreement. "This is an extremely important amendment. It gives legal certainty that generic medicines can be exported at reasonable prices to satisfy the needs of countries with no pharmaceutical production capacity, or those with limited capacity," said WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo. Ambassador Modest Mero of Tanzania, Chair of the TRIPS Council, underlined the importance of the entry into force of the first-ever amendment of the multilateral agreements administered by the WTO but also a concrete response by trade ministers to address the concerns in the area of public health.
While inequality has become a topic of increased popularity and politicization in recent years, most of the attention has focused on how 1% own an increasingly large share of the world’s wealth, rather than on inequalities between nations. In a global context in which national borders and citizenship pose few barriers to the mobility of capital, the reality is also a story of the world’s richest nations continuing to reap a disproportionate amount of the globe’s profits. Contemporary analyses of global inequality, capitalism, and development would benefit from the lessons of earlier works concerned with similar questions decades before. One example is the classic work written by Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. While some contemporary accounts recognise that the problems of African countries do not lie exclusively in Africa, they do not go far enough. Piketty’s discussion of the extraction of wealth from the African continent, for example, is largely independent from his analysis of the accumulation of wealth in other parts of the globe. For Rodney, it was impossible to explain development and the accumulation of wealth in one region without deeply understanding its relations to other regions of underdevelopment and the extraction of wealth. This relation, he argued was not accidental; it was endemic to capitalism itself.
Food animals are considered as key reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant (ABR) bacteria with the use of antibiotics in the food production industry having contributed to the global challenge. There are no geographic boundaries to impede the worldwide spread of ABR, and limitations in the interventions in one country could compromise the efficacy and endanger containment policies implemented in other parts of the world. Multifaceted, comprehensive, and integrated measures complying with the One Health approach are argued to be imperative to ensure food safety and security, effectively combat infectious diseases, curb the emergence and spread of ABR, and preserve the efficacy of antibiotics for future generations. Countries are urged to follow the World Health Organisation, World Organisation for Animal Health, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations recommendations to implement national action plans encompassing human, (food) animal, and environmental sectors to improve policies, interventions and activities that address the prevention and containment of ABR from farm-to-fork. This review covers (i) the origin of antibiotic resistance, (ii) pathways by which bacteria spread to humans from farm-to-fork, (iii) differences in levels of antibiotic resistance between developed and developing countries, and (iv) prevention and containment measures of antibiotic resistance in the food chain.
This report provides updated information on the status of implementing the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions (“the Code”) in and by countries. It presents the legal status of the Code, including - where such information is available - to what extent Code provisions have been incorporated in national legal measures. The report also provides information on the efforts made by countries to monitor and enforce the Code through the establishment of formal mechanisms. Its findings and subsequent recommendations aim to improve the understanding of how countries are implementing the Code, what challenges they face in doing so, and where the focus must be on further efforts to assist them in more effective Code implementation.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in October 2016 recommended that governments should tax sugary drinks as part of the global campaign against obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay. South Africa’s Treasury plans to introduce a tax on sugary drinks in April 2017, while Ireland announced it would also introduce a sugary drinks tax in 2018. “Consumption of free sugars, including products like sugary drinks, is a major factor in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes,” said Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director of WHO’s Department for the Prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). “If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services.” Taxes that result in a 20% increase or more in the retail price of sugary drinks would result in proportional reductions in consumption of such products, according to the WHO report, “Fiscal policies for Diet and Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs)”. Obesity has more than doubled between 1980 and 2014. By 2014, almost 40% of adults worldwide were overweight, with 15% of women and 11% of men obese. Meanwhile, diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980, rising from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. In 2012, 38 million people lost their lives due to NCDs, 16 million or 42% of whom died prematurely – before 70 years – from largely avoidable conditions. More than 80% of people who died prematurely from a NCD were in developing countries. Governments have committed to reduce deaths from NCDs, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda includes a target to reduce premature deaths from diabetes, cancers, heart, and lung diseases by one-third by 2030.
The author argues in relation to the BRICS summit in October 2016, that BRICS is no longer just an economic grouping but is fast emerging as a political force in global decision-making. Having successfully launched its New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement, BRICS now plans to launch its own credit rating agency to end the dominance of the likes of Standard & Poor's or Moody's and Fitch and to bring in emerging economies' perspectives to further enhance their standing and competitiveness in international markets. Similarly, learning from the July 12 Arbitration on South China Sea, BRICS Legal Forum endorsed in August 2016 its own robust arbitration mechanisms to address the problem of double standards of advanced nations. In addition to a now-functioning disputes resolution centre in Shanghai, such as a BRICS-wise arrangement will include commercial arbitration allowing BRICS to resolve disputes for foreign investors. Faced with continuing global financial crisis, leaders have also been discussing developing a BRICS bond market to address challenges of debt securities trading to strengthen their existing lack of liquidity making them vulnerable to foreign portfolio investors.
COSATU reflected in relation to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of states summit the need for concrete solutions to the concrete problems faced rather than policy statements that do not improve the lives of the people. COSATU identifies the following key issues as key for SADC: desperate conditions of poverty, hunger, and unemployment, human rights abuses, exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation, job losses and starvation wage crisis, policy crisis and poverty. They call for policies for active industrialisation and to tackle underdevelopment, as raised at the 2016 SADC Civil society Apex Forum and the Southern African Peoples Solidarity Forum held on the sidelines of the SADC Summit. Whilst COSATU welcomed small steps towards a paradigm shift in the Industrialisation policy debate, they called for concrete steps to build the regions manufacturing base and industrial capacity to produce goods and services, in order to stimulate economies and create the much needed jobs, enhance decent work and improve the quality of life for the majority of people and called for bold and inspiring leadership.
The ‘Rise of the South’ and the role of ‘emerging powers’ in global development has animated much of the political and economic discourse of the past decade. There is, however, little empirical evidence on the contribution that emerging Southern partners make to sustainable development, due to the lack of common measurement systems for South–South cooperation (SSC). This case study utilises the analytical framework developed by the Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST) to assess the range, extent and quality of South Africa’s peace, governance and economic support to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The study reveals that South Africa, in absolute financial terms, is a significant development partner in the DRC, and even exceeds the traditional donors when its aid is measured in proportion to gross national income. The qualitative field research highlights that South Africa’s approach to development co-operation to a large extent reflects the core values of SSC, although with a mixed bag of successes and failures in terms of the results of co-operation activities. This pilot study of the South Africa–DRC development partnership is one of the first in which the NeST conceptual and methodological framework has been tested for the purpose of further refining tools and indicators for SSC analysis, so as to assist the future monitoring and evaluation endeavours of South Africa and other emerging development partners.