Governing global health.

Abstract

Health problems have never respected borders. Leprosy spread from Asia to Europe in the 4th century B.C. thanks most likely to the army of Alexander the Great. The Black Death originated in Central Asia and subsequently ripped through Europe and the Middle East in the 1340s. Diseases carried across the Atlantic by European invaders decimated native populations in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Health threats have become increasingly global in modern times. In 1918-19 the Spanish flu took an estimated 50-100 million lives-more than all those killed in World War I. And these days the ever-greater integration of economies makes it that much easier for diseases such as HIV/AIDS to cross borders and leap continents. Moreover some argue that if avian flu makes the jump to human-to-human transmissible form the rapidity of its spread could be devastating. Exacerbating matters ill health can be spread through other spillovers of globalization. For example climate change-driven largely by industrial expansion in the West and emerging markets-promotes desertification and drought (which result in food shortages and malnutrition) and will likely result in population movements (which could have a major impact on health). And national or regional economic policies such as agricultural subsidies to European and U.S. farmers hamper the prospects for developing world farmers to climb out of poverty and shrug off the diseases that are strongly associated with poverty and inequality. (excerpt)