Health equity in economic and trade policies

On Sept 5, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched the International Health Partnership —a global "compact" for achieving the Health Millennium Development Goals—at a prestigious gathering at number 10 Downing Street. The support for this initiative is impressive. But what does the International Health Partnership (IHP) mean for people living in poorer countries? The IHP is an agreement between donors and developing countries. Global and country level partnerships will set out a process of mutual responsibility and accountability for the development and implementation of the national health plans of developing countries. The overall aim of the IHP is to improve the coverage and use of health services—whether through public or private channels, or through non governmental organisations—in order to deliver improved health outcomes, especially for the health-related MDGs, and other international commitments such as universal access to antiretroviral therapy. The IHP does not provide any new funding.

The UK Prime Minister and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have released a joint statement on a new International Health Partnership, which will bring together major donor countries, including Britain and Germany, and key international agencies such as the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. The agreement was developed with bilateral, international health and funding agencies, developing countries, and foundations; it commits all artners to: working with country owned plans; creating a mechanism to agree donor support to national plans; coordinating their efforts on the ground; and focussing on the creation of sustainable health systems which deliver improved outcomes. Partners will work together to ensure that health plans are well designed, well supported and well implemented.

Hundreds of representatives of social and labour organisations, faith based, community-based and health networks, small farmers, traders, women and youth organisations, and developmental, human rights and environmental NGOs from across the whole of the Southern African region gathered in a Peoples Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, 15-16 August 2007, parallel to the SADC Heads of State summit. They discussed many issues of common concern and agreed that there is now an urgent generalised threat hanging over the whole future of SADC. This arises from the insistence of the European Union (EU) that SADC, like other regional groupings in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (the ACP countries) must sign a far-reaching trade liberalisation agreement with the EU. Participants claim this has been misleadingly entitled an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), despite already witnessing the damaging effects of trade liberalisation.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has proposed a new plan to unlock global trade talks that have stalled over farm subsidies in rich countries and reluctance by poor nations to further open their markets for Western goods and services without reciprocation from industrialised nations. But analysts who studied the new text warned that it still leaves rich countries' trade protections largely intact, while giving poor nations little in return.