Tony Blair is running out of time on achieving the third and most controversial part of the 'Marshall Plan for Africa' he promised earlier this year: trade justice. With just weeks to go before critical World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong, Europe and the US are in deadlock over how far they should open up their markets to farmers from poor countries - and what they will demand from the rest of the world in return.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Africa faces bitter harvest as WTO subsidy talks stall
The equality predicament: report on the world social situation 2005
United Nations 2005
This report traces the trends and patterns in economic and non-economic aspects of inequality and examines their causes and consequences across and within regions and countries. It focuses on the gaps between the formal and informal economies and between skilled and unskilled workers, the growing disparities in health, education and opportunities for social, economic and political participation as well as analysing the impact of structural adjustment, market reforms, globalisation and privatisation on economic and social indicators.
World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development
The World Bank's annual World Development Report this year focuses on equity, arguing that inequality of opportunity is holding back prosperity and economic growth. This article from the Institute for Development Studies argues that the report fails to get to grips with what inequality really means: "The World Development Report for 2006 on Equity and Development (WDR 2006) has been described by Sanjay Reddy from Columbia University as reflecting the most progressive face of the World Bank. This is because it argues strongly on ethical and efficiency grounds for the need to tackle the gross disparities in opportunity for children born in different parts of the world. Reddy also finds that the theoretical construction of the report is 'rather clunky and appears to be the product of political compromise…but is workable'."
Have pharmaceutical companies come to the party in Africa?
Bowing to huge international pressure, major pharmaceutical companies have made significant efforts to make their patented antiretroviral drugs available in Africa while ensuring that they – not generic manufacturers – maintain market control in the continent. Globally, the ARV market accounts for less than 3% of pharmaceutical sales worldwide and Africa’s portion of this has been negligible. However, with the World Health Organisation’s campaign to get three million people on ARV treatment by the end of this year (the 3-by-5 campaign), there has been a scramble to ensure improved supplies.
The health impacts of globalisation
Globalization and Health 2005
"This paper describes a conceptual framework for the health implications of globalisation. The framework is developed by first identifying the main determinants of population health and the main features of the globalisation process. The resulting conceptual model explicitly visualises that globalisation affects the institutional, economic, social-cultural and ecological determinants of population health, and that the globalisation process mainly operates at the contextual level, while influencing health through its more distal and proximal determinants. The developed framework provides valuable insights in how to organise the complexity involved in studying the health effects resulting from globalisation."
People's Health Movement: The Cuenca Declaration
"We deplore the worsening conditions of health experienced by many of the world's people and we denounce their cause - neo- liberalism. Neo-liberal polices imposed by the G8, transfer wealth from the South to the North, from the poor to the rich, and from the public to the private sector. Corporate profits increase while poor people, indigenous peoples and the victims of war and occupation, suffer. Economically and politically generated health inequalities have increased, yet these root causes of avoidable disease and death are not effectively addressed by current policies or programs."
Further details: /newsletter/id/31077
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and poor people's right to water
Natural Resources Forum, Volume 29 Issue 2 Page 154, May 2005
"The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) seeks to expand international trade in a wide range of services ranging from tourism to telecommunications and education. In recent years, it has come under attack from civil society organizations in both the North and the South for having a detrimental impact on poor people's right to basic services. This article explores some of these controversies, using the example of water services. It focuses specifically on the impact of the GATS on poor people's right to water and national governments' ability to safeguard the interests of poor people through regulation."
G8 2005: a missed opportunity for global health
The Lancet 2005
This year people in bars and at football matches were asking about the Group of 8 (G8) nations summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Such unprecedented popular interest was prompted by Bob Geldof's Live 8 concerts and the Make Poverty History campaign. These initiatives were organised to raise awareness about African poverty and to pressure politicians into tackling the preventable global burden of disease afflicting billions of people living in low-income settings. When asked if his lobbying had paid off, Geldof said, “A great justice has been done”. He should have said “No”. (requires registration)
Globalisation bad for health
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.
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."