Alternative reports on global health, presented at the second People's Health Assembly in Ecuador this week, question the free-market, neoliberal economic model and view it as the cause of many of the health problems facing humanity today. These include the indiscriminate use of toxic products in agriculture, pollution caused by the oil industry, the consumption of transgenic crops, the destruction of the urban environment by pollution, and the commercialisation of health services. The reports by the Global Health Watch and the Observatorio Latinoamericano de Salud see a healthy life as a fundamental human right, the enjoyment of which depends on economic, political and social factors.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
WHO praises G8 on health
Statement by Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General, World Health Organization
"Today the G8 has made an unprecedented commitment to health which has the potential to forever change the lives of millions of people in Africa. Disease kills 3.5 million African children under five every year. HIV/AIDS affects more than 25 million African people. Tuberculosis kills 1500 each day. A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. I welcome the G8's pledge to turn these trends around. The aim of providing near-universal access to AIDS treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS by 2010, combined with prevention and care, has the potential to turn the tide on this epidemic. We already know that treatment can turn a fatal disease into a chronic condition and we have demonstrated that this works in resource-poor countries."
G8 should focus on HIV, women's empowerment
When the leaders of the world's largest industrial nations meet in Scotland, they will debate how to address the HIV/Aids crisis and whether to significantly increase assistance to Africa. But for the summit to have a real impact on the Aids pandemic, the G8 will have to do more than increase funding; they will have to address the economic and social realities that make women and girls a special, high-risk group. Evidence from Africa shows the importance and cost-effectiveness of this strategy.
Global Trade and Public Health
American Journal of Public Health 2005
Global trade and international trade agreements have transformed the capacity of governments to monitor and to protect public health, to regulate occupational and environmental health conditions and food products, and to ensure affordable access to medications. Proposals under negotiation for the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the regional Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement cover a wide range of health services. Public health professionals and organizations rarely participate in trade negotiations or in resolution of trade disputes. The linkages among global trade, international trade agreements, and public health deserve more attention than they have received to date. (abstract only)
Implications of the G8 debt deal for Africa
Debt campaigners need to be very clear about what the recent debt deal actually represents and its serious limitations, says a briefing paper from Eurodad. "There is broad agreement among civil society organisations that the deal doesn't go nearly as far as the overblown rhetoric which accompanied its release. And that it has some worrying strings attached.”
MSF urges UN and G8 AIDS drug action
The international medical NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), is urging G8 nations and the UN to push for speedy delivery of the cheapest and latest anti-AIDS drugs to developing countries. MSF stressed that this was vital to head off a looming supply and cost crisis, because "access to newer drugs is increasingly critical, as the growing number of people with HIV/AIDS currently on treatment will inevitably develop resistance to first-line treatments".
Globalization and Health: A new, critical view
Ronald Labonte And Ted Schrecker
In Zambia, a woman named Chileshe is dying of AIDS. She was infected by her now dead husband, who once worked in a textile plant along with thousands of others but lost his job when Zambia opened its borders to cheap, second-hand clothing. Resorting to work as a street vendor, he would get drunk and trade money for sex - often with women whose own husbands were somewhere else working, or dead, and who desperately needed money for their children. Desperation, she thought, is what makes this disease move so swiftly; she recalls that a woman from the former Zaire passing through her village once said that the true meaning of SIDA, the French acronym for AIDS, was "Salaire Insuffisant Depuis des Années" (Schoepf, 1998).
Chileshe's is one of four stories we used in a report that has just been published by Canada's Centre for Social Justice (Labonte, Schrecker & Sen Gupta, 2005b) to dramatize the health impacts of transnational economic integration ('globalization'). It is a composite, like the stories used in the World Bank's 1995 'World Development Report'. The Centre for Social Justice report, which grew out of a contribution to the first 'Global Health Watch Report' (forthcoming in July at http://www.ghwatch.org), directly challenges the elite religion of neoliberal, market-oriented economic policy, as promoted by agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Drawing on an extensive research base, we describe the causal pathways that link globalization to unequal and deteriorating health outcomes by way of increasing inequalities in access to the social determinants of health, and policies that tilt the economic playing field even more steeply toward the rich countries.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30966
Research shows EPAs will damage regional trade between developing countries
Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are likely to harm regional integration between developing countries, without achieving significant liberalisation of trade between the EU and ACP countries, according to new research by Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan at the Institute of Development Studies. EPAs are new trade agreements being negotiated by the European Union to regulate trade between the EU and the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) group of developing countries. Following the recent publication of the Commission for Africa report, the UK Government argued that EPAs should not be used to force open ACP markets. New IDS research indicates that it will be feasible to achieve this aim, without falling foul of the WTO, if the EU sticks to its recent practice in negotiations with other countries. The evidence from examining the detailed situation of ACP states suggests that most of them can avoid rapid or substantial liberalisation, thereby protecting fledgling domestic industries.
Health - a priority of the wealthy?
Health has gained importance on the global agenda. It has become recognized in forums where it was once not addressed. In this article three issues are considered: global health policy actors, global health priorities and the means of addressing the identified health priorities. The arenas for global health policy-making have shifted from the public spheres towards arenas that include the transnational for-profit sector. Global health policy has become increasingly fragmented and verticalized. Infectious diseases have gained ground as global health priorities, while non-communicable diseases and the broader issues of health systems development have been neglected. Approaches to tackling the health problems are increasingly influenced by trade and industrial interests with the emphasis on technological solutions.
The consequences of the new Indian Patents Act
The Indian Patents Act of 1970 has been amended to allow for the granting of pharmaceutical product patents. India was obliged to make these changes to comply with the WTO TRIPS Agreement as of January 1st 2005. The new Patents Act will mean that over time the source of affordable generics may dry up. The law will only affect medicines that have come onto the market since 1995. However, the amendments made by the Indian parliament have some very important provisions for access in the short term, says Medicines Sans Frontieres.