The People’s Health Movement has warned that the current global economic recession is a threat to the world’s health. It demands immediate measures by the international community and individual governments to ensure adequate resources to revitalise public health systems, pay urgent attention to the needs of the poor rather than reviving failed big commercial banks, allocate funds for the restoration of jobs and livelihood opportunities in low-income communities and strengthen social welfare programmes in developing countries. It urges those in power not to use the economic crisis downturn as an excuse to cut funds for welfare-related programmes and calls upon the World Health Assembly to adopt the final recommendations of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health immediately.
Equity in Health
The World Health Assembly, the supreme decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), wrapped-up its fifty-eighth session last month. More than 2200 people from WHO's 192 Member States, nongovernmental organizations and other observers attended the meeting which took place between 16-25 May. The Assembly reviewed progress made so far in polio eradication and identified what needs to be done to interrupt the final chains of wild-type poliovirus transmission worldwide by the end of this year. The Assembly also noted the progress made in scaling-up treatment and care within a coordinated and comprehensive response to HIV/AIDS and discussed smallpox vaccine reserves and research on the smallpox virus.
After eight days of intense deliberations the 54th World Health Assembly closed its business in Geneva today. The biggest event in the annual calendar for the World Health Organization (WHO), the Assembly charts the global course for the Organization and its 191 Member States in dealing with major public health threats. For the first time in the history of the Organization, the United Nations Secretary-General addressed the Assembly. In his AIDS-focused speech, Mr Kofi Annan outlined the structure of a multi-billion dollar Global AIDS and Health Fund to fight HIV/AIDS and "other infectious diseases that blight the prospects for many developing countries – starting with TB and malaria".
The World Health Assembly, the policy-framing body that gives guidance to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the views of member states and sets global health policy, voted to support a resolution affirming that public health interests should remain paramount when framing policy on pharmaceuticals.
World Health Day, on 7 April, marks the founding of the World Health Organization and is an opportunity to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health each year. In 2008, World Health Day focuses on the need to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change. The theme “protecting health from climate change” puts health at the centre of the global dialogue about climate change. WHO selected this theme in recognition that climate change is posing ever growing threats to global public health security. Through increased collaboration, the global community will be better prepared to cope with climate-related health challenges worldwide. Examples of such collaborative actions are: strengthening surveillance and control of infectious diseases, ensuring safer use of diminishing water supplies, and coordinating health action in emergencies.
On World Health Day, 7 April 2011, the focus will be on antimicrobials. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the use and misuse of antimicrobials in human medicine and animal husbandry over the past 70 years have increased the number and types of micro organisms resistant to these medicines, causing deaths, greater suffering and disability, and higher health-care costs. If this phenomenon continues unchecked, WHO warns, many infectious diseases risk becoming uncontrollable and could derail progress made towards reaching the health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals for 2015. Furthermore, the growth of global trade and travel allows resistant organisms to spread worldwide within hours. WHO calls on governments and stakeholders to implement the policies and practices needed to prevent and counter the emergence of highly resistant micro-organisms.
World Health Organisation representatives will visit South Africa next month to assess whether the country qualifies for drugs being made available at hugely discounted prices which are effective against drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The Framework Convention Alliance is a coalition of over 250 groups from more than 90 countries dedicated to support the ratification and implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. As a candidate for the post of Director General of the World Health Organization, the FCTC wrote and sent out questionnaires to solicit various participants' views on tobacco control by asking them to respond to the survey. The questionnaire used can be found at the weblink above.
Christopher J L Murray, executive director. Evidence and Information for Policy, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Braveman et al criticise the World Health Organiztion's approach of measuring the full spectrum of health inequalities in a population. They argue for a selective approach in which only health inequalities correlated with factors such as income, social class, or race should matter. Such a selective approach runs counter to the literature on inequality in other disciplines and runs the risk of discouraging scientific inquiry into the causes of inequality.
Paula Braveman, professor of family and community medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA; Barbara Starfield, university distinguished professor, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MA, USA; H Jack Geiger, Logan professor of community medicine, emeritus c., City University of New York Medical School, Department of Community Health and Social Medicine, New York, NY, USA. BMJ September 22, 2001;323 678-681.
The World Health Organization’s World Health Report 2000 deserves praise for recommending that national health systems be assessed not only by the average health status of a country’s population but also by the extent to which health varies within the population. We are concerned, however, that the report’s approach to measuring health inequalities does not support -- and actually undermines -- efforts to achieve greater equity in health within nations, according to any meaningful definition of equity. We believe that the report’s measure of health inequalities lacks practical utility in general for guiding national policy because it provides no information to guide resource allocation or to target policies. In addition, it does not measure socioeconomic or other social disparities in health within countries. It therefore -- when used, as its authors implicitly and explicitly recommend, as a substitute for monitoring social inequalities in health -- removes consideration of equity and human rights from the routine measurement and reporting of health disparities within nations.