Citizens of high income countries rely on highly regulated medicines markets. However low income countries
We utilized our previous studies analyzing the reforms affecting the health sector developed in the 1990s by financial groups to frame the strategies implemented by the pharmaceutical industry to regain market positions and to understand the challenges that regulatory agencies are confronting. We followed an analytical approach for analyzing the process generated by the disputes...
India and the EU are currently negotiating a Trade and Investment Agreement which also covers services. This paper examines the opportunities for and constraints to India-EU relations in health services in the context of this agreement, focusing on the EU as a market for India's health services exports and collaboration. The paper provides an overview of key features of health...
This study analyses the priorities of public donors in funding HIV prevention by either integrated condom programming or HIV preventive microbicides and vaccines in the period between 2000 and 2008. It further compares the public funding investments of the USA government and European governments, including the EU, as we expect the two groups to invest differently in HIV...
Nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) are powerful tools for the successful treatment of nicotine addiction and tobacco use. The medicines are clinically effective, supported by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and are now World Health Organization-approved essential medicines. Enabling global access to NRT remains a challenge given ongoing confusion and misperceptions...
This paper considers the public health impacts of the income-generating activities of organised crime. These range from the traditional vice activities of running prostitution and supplying narcotics, to the newer growth areas of human trafficking in its various forms, from international supply of young people and children as sex workers through deceit, coercion or purchase from...
Current definitions of 'global health
While primary care, obstetrical, and surgical services have started to expand in the world's poorest regions, there is only sparse literature on the essential support systems that are required to make these operations function. Diagnostic imaging is critical to effective rural healthcare delivery, yet it has been severely neglected by the academic, public, and private sectors...
Many of the Millennium Development Goals are not being achieved in the world's poorest countries, yet only five years remain until the target date. The financing of these Goals is not merely insufficient; current evidence indicates that the temporary nature of the financing, as well as challenges to coordinating its delivery and directing it to the most needy recipients, hinder...
It is clear that globalization is something more than a purely economic phenomenon manifesting itself on a global scale. Among the visible manifestations of globalization are the greater international movement of goods and services, financial capital, information and people. In addition, there are technological developments, more transboundary cultural exchanges, facilitated by...
Global health financing has increased dramatically in recent years, indicative of a rise in health as a foreign policy issue. Several governments have issued specific foreign policy statements on global health and a new term, global health diplomacy, has been coined to describe the processes by which state and non-state actors engage to position health issues more prominently in...
The year 2008 celebrated 30 years of Primary Health Care (PHC) policy emerging from the Alma Ata Declaration with publication of two key reports, the World Health Report 2008 and the Report of the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. Both reports reaffirmed the relevance of PHC in terms of its vision and values in today's world. However, important challenges in terms...
The accessibility to improved water and sanitation has been understood as a crucial mechanism to save infants and children from the adverse health outcomes associated with diarrheal disease. This knowledge stimulated the worldwide donor community to develop a specific category of aid aimed at the water and sanitation sector. The actual impact of this assistance on increasing...
The link between political freedom and health is unclear. We aimed to determine the association by exploring the relationship of historical and cumulative freedom levels with important health outcomes. We obtained countrywide health indicators for life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality ratio, % low birth weight babies, Gini coefficient (a measure of wealth...
Increasingly, food companies play an important role in stemming the rising burden of nutrition-related chronic diseases. Concrete actions taken by these companies include global public commitments to address food reformulation, consumer information, responsible marketing, promotion of healthy lifestyles, and public-private partnerships. These actions are reviewed together with...
Universal access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries faces numerous challenges: increasing numbers of people needing ART, new guidelines recommending more expensive antiretroviral (ARV) medicines, limited financing, and few fixed-dose combination (FDC) products. Global initiatives aim to promote efficient global ARV markets, yet little is known...
The prevalence of chronic non-communicable disease, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), is rising worldwide. In Africa, T2DM is primarily affecting those living in urban areas and increasingly affecting the poor. Diabetes management among urban poor is an area of research that has received little attention. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dar es Salam, the causes and...
This paper draws together contributions to a scientific table discussion on obesity at the European Science Open Forum 2008 which took place in Barcelona, Spain. Socioeconomic dimensions of global obesity, including those factors promoting it, those surrounding the social perceptions of obesity and those related to integral public health solutions, are discussed. It argues that...
Africa faces a double burden of infectious and chronic diseases. While infectious diseases still account for at least 69% of deaths on the continent, age specific mortality rates from chronic diseases as a whole are actually higher in sub Saharan Africa than in virtually all other regions of the world, in both men and women. Over the next ten years the continent is projected to...
Africa faces an urgent but 'neglected epidemic
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy is essential for maximising individual treatment outcomes and preventing the development of drug resistance. It is, however, frequently compromised due to predictable, but adverse, scenarios in the countries most severely affected by HIV/AIDS. This paper looks at lessons from three specific crises in southern Africa: the 2008 floods in...
A coordinated response to HIV/AIDS remains one of the 'grand challenges
Sickle Cell Disorder is a global health problem with psychosocial implications. Nigeria has the largest population of people with sickle cell disorder, with about 150,000 births annually. This study explored the psychosocial impact of sickle cell disorder in 408 adolescents and adults attending three hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria. A questionnaire was designed for the study, with...