Global Health Watch Global civil society has not adequately participated in international health advocacy. Although high-profile success has been achieved with some campaigns, most notably around access to medicines and breastfeeding and certain diseases, there has been a striking lack of involvement and pressure from health campaigners on broader public health and health systems issues. In addition, disparities in health between the rich and the poor have grown at alarming rates both within and between countries, leaving society and the public health movement with a large humanitarian and moral challenge. The increasingly global dimensions of poverty, disease and health policy require a much more vigorous input from public health experts, civil society and non-government organisations. The People’s Health Movement, the Global Equity Gauge Alliance and Medact therefore propose to mobilise a fragmented global health community through the publication of an annual Global Health Watch. This publication will be used to shift the health policy agenda away from a technocratic approach to delivering health, to one that recognises the important political, social and economic barriers which prevent the achievement of better health. We want the Watch to strengthen the calls for a broad approach to health amongst policy-makers, health professionals, campaigners, researchers and others concerned with health and to act as a reality-check on those formulating health policy by providing a forum which magnifies the voice of the poor and vulnerable and those who work with them. The Watch will consist of a compilation of chapters on various global health issues written by NGOs and academics. Stories, experiences and analysis direct from poor communities will be threaded through the chapters and enable those who are traditionally unheard to voice their concerns on global health issues: The Global Health Watch team is now looking both for authors to write chapters and for stories and experiences from around the world. For more information on the areas we are covering, go the Medact website www.medact.org Medact The Grayston Centre 28 Charles Square London N1 6HT United Kingdom Tel: +44 20 7324 4733 Fax: +44 20 7324 4734 www.medact.org October, 2003