World Health And World Politics

Using internal documents, meeting records, personal interviews and secondary sources, Siddiqi analyses WHO policies and programmes from a non-medical perspective. He examines charges of politicization and traces their rise over the past two decades, including their recent link to fears about a complete breakdown of multilateral cooperation. Siddiqi also chronicles the Malaria Eradication Programme from its enthusiastic inauguration in the 1950s to its demise and substitution by less ambitious initiatives after 1969. Through this case study he illumines a strategic shift in WHO policyfrom the 'vertical' approach of targeting a single disease to a 'horizontal', multi-pronged attack on a spectrum of health problems.

Since 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched numerous programs aimed at improving health conditions around the globe, ranging from efforts to eradicate smallpox to education programs about the health risks of smoking. In setting global health priorities and carrying out initiatives, the WHO bureaucracy has faced the challenge of reconciling the preferences of a small minority of wealthy nations, who fund the organization, with the demands of poorer member countries, who hold the majority of votes. In The World Health Organization between North and South, Nitsan Chorev shows how the WHO bureaucracy has succeeded not only in avoiding having its agenda co-opted by either coalition of member states but also in reaching a consensus that fit the bureaucracy's own principles and interests. Chorev assesses the response of the WHO bureaucracy to member-state pressure in two particularly contentious moments: when during the 1970s and early 1980s developing countries forcefully called for a more equal international economic order, and when in the 1990s the United States and other wealthy countries demanded international organizations adopt neoliberal economic reforms. In analyzing these two periods, Chorev demonstrates how strategic maneuvering made it possible for a vulnerable bureaucracy to preserve a relatively autonomous agenda, promote a consistent set of values, and protect its interests in the face of challenges from developing and developed countries alike.

A history of the World Health Organization, covering major achievements in its seventy years while also highlighting the organization's internal tensions. This account by three leading historians of medicine examines how well the organization has pursued its aim of everyone, everywhere attaining the highest possible level of health.

Protecting and promoting health is inherently a political endeavor that requires a sophisticated understanding of the distribution and use of power. Yet while the global nature of health is widely recognized, its political nature is less well understood. In recent decades, the interdisciplinary field of global health politics has emerged to demonstrate the interconnections of health and core political topics, including foreign and security policy, trade, economics, and development. Today a growing body of scholarship examines how the global health landscape has both shaped and been shaped by political actors and structures. The Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics provides an authoritative overview and assessment of research on this important and complicated subject. The volume is motivated by two arguments. First, health is not simply a technical subject, requiring evidence-based solutions to real-world problems, but an arena of political contestation where norms, values, and interests also compete and collide. Second, globalization has fundamentally changed the nature of health politics in terms of the ideas, interests, and institutions involved. The volume comprises more than 30 chapters by leading experts in global health and politics. Each chaper provides an overview of the state of the art on a given theoretical perspective, major actor, or global health issue. The Handbook offers both an excellent introduction to scholars new to the field and also an invaluable teaching and research resource for experts seeking to understand global health politics and its future directions.

International responses to the outbreak of SARS, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the promotion of health as a human right all demonstrate how global politics have a profound effect on the way we think about and respond to major health challenges. Despite a growing interest in the relationship between health and international relations there has yet to be a systematic study of the links between them. Global Politics of Health aims to fill this gap - ultimately showing how world politics can be good, or bad, for your health. This book calls for a more nuanced understanding of the nature of the current global health crisis and the political dilemmas faced by those responsible for the development and implementation of responses to it. By charting these debates and showing how they shape the way actors think about key issues relating to health, such as people movement, infectious disease, the business of health, and the consequences of war, this volume provides an innovative and comprehensive introduction to health and international relations for students of global politics, health studies and related disciplines.

The World Health Organization (WHO), as the United Nations specialized agency for health, has been at the centre of international health cooperation for over sixty years. With origins dating from the nineteenth century, WHO’s mandate is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health. The huge challenge of fulfilling this objective has not only required high-level technical skills, but has led the organization to engage with a broad range of political and economic interests. WHO has enjoyed many high-profile successes such as the global eradication of smallpox and SARS, and ongoing campaigns against polio and other diseases. On other issues, such as essential drugs, tobacco control and diet and nutrition, efforts to tackle the broader determinants of health has brought the organization into contact with issues such as globalization, poverty, social justice and human rights. Kelley Lee analyzes the WHO’s role in international cooperation, examining its changing structures, key programmes and individuals. Of particular focus are the challenges WHO has faced in recent years given the emergence of other global health initiatives and how WHO has sought to remain effective as the "world’s health conscience" within an increasingly complex global context.

Brock Chisholm was one of the most influential Canadians of the twentieth century. A world-renowned psychiatrist, he was the first director-general of the World Health Organization and built it up against overwhelming political odds in the years immediately following the Second World War. An atheist and a fierce critic of jingoistic nationalism, he supported world peace and world government and became a champion of the United Nations and the WHO. Post-1945 international politics, global health issues, and medical history intersect in this highly readable account of a remarkable Canadian.

The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.