Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T18:59:00.638Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - State of Global Health in a Radically Unequal World

Patterns and Prospects

from Section 1 - Global Health: Definitions and Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

By
Ted Schrecker  and
Ronald Labonté
Edited by
Solomon Benatar  and
Gillian Brock
Solomon Benatar
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Cape Town
Gillian Brock
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of Auckland
Get access

Summary

Imagine for a moment a series of disasters that kills more than 800 women every day for a year: the equivalent of two or three daily crashes of crowded long-distance airliners or the equivalent of the direct death toll from the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon every four days. There is little question that such a situation would quickly be regarded as a humanitarian emergency, as the stuff of headlines, especially if ways of preventing the events were well known and widely practiced (as is the case with avoiding crashes in civil aviation). However, remarkably little attention is paid outside the global health and human rights domains to complications of pregnancy and childbirth that kill more than 300,000 women every year – a cause of death now almost unheard of in high-income countries (HICs), although this would not have been the case a century ago. A Canadian woman’s lifetime risk of dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 8,800; for a woman in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, it is 1 in 36 (Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group, 2015).

Type
Chapter
Information
Global Health
Ethical Challenges
 , pp. 15 - 27
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adeyi, O., Chellaraj, G., Goldstein, E., Preker, A. S., & Ringold, D. (1997). Health status during the transition in Central and Eastern Europe: development in reverse? Health Policy and Planning 12, 132–145.Google Scholar
Agyei-Mensah, S., & de-Graft Aikins, A. (2010). Epidemiological transition and the double burden of disease in Accra, Ghana. Journal of Urban Health 87, 879–897.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, R., Cardamone, T., Kar, D., Pogge, T., & Solheim, E. (2015). Illicit Financial Flows: The Most Damaging Economic Condition Facing the Developing World. Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity. Retrieved from www.gfintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Ford-Book-Final.pdf.Google Scholar
Balabanova, D., Mills, A., Conteh, L., et al. (2013). Good health at low cost 25 years on: lessons for the future of health systems strengthening. Lancet 381, 2118–2133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baraldi, L. G., Martinez Steele, E., Canella, D. S., & Monteiro, C. A. (2018). Consumption of ultra-processed foods and associated sociodemographic factors in the USA between 2007 and 2012: evidence from a nationally representative cross-sectional study. BMJ Open 8, E020574.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barnett, J. C., & Berchick, E. R. (2017). Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau. Retrieved from www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-260.pdf.Google Scholar
Bartels, L. M. (2004). Economic Inequality and Political Representation. Syracuse, NY: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.Google Scholar
Bartels, L. M. (2017). Political Inequality in Affluent Democracies (CSDI Working Paper No. 5–2017). Nashville, TN: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Vanderbilt University. Retrieved from www.vanderbilt.edu/csdi/research/Working_Paper_5_2017.pdf.Google Scholar
Birn, A.-E., Pillay, Y., & Holtz, T. (2017). Textbook of Global Health, 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, R. E., Victora, C. G., Walker, S. P., et al. (2013). Maternal and child undernutrition and overweight in low-income and middle-income countries. Lancet 382, 427–451.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brock, G. (2011). International taxation, in Benatar, S., & Brock, G. (eds.), Global Health and Global Health Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 274–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2017). Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2017, 397–476.Google Scholar
Coker, R. J. (2004). Review: Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis: public health challenges. Tropical Medicine & International Health 9, 25–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008). Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health (Final Report). Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2008/9789241563703_eng.pdf.Google Scholar
Deaton, A. (2003). Health, inequality, and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature 41, 113–158.Google Scholar
Deaton, A. (2004). Health in an age of globalization. Brookings Trade Forum 2004, 83–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deaton, A. (2006). Global patterns of income and health. Wider Angle 2006(2), 1–3.Google Scholar
The Economist (2016). How the other tenth lives (October 6), www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/10/06/how-the-other-tenth-lives.Google Scholar
Eyoh, D., & Sandbrook, R. (2003). Pragmatic neo-liberalism and just development in Africa, in Kohli, A., Moon, C., & Sørensen, G. (eds.), States, Markets, and Just Growth: Development in the Twenty-first Century. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, pp. 227–257.Google Scholar
Ezeh, A., Oyebode, O., Satterthwaite, D., et al. (2017). The history, geography, and sociology of slums and the health problems of people who live in slums. Lancet 389, 547–558.Google Scholar
Ezzati, M., Vander Hoorn, S., Lawes, C. M., et al. (2005). Rethinking the “diseases of affluence” paradigm: global patterns of nutritional risks in relation to economic development. Public Library of Science Medicine 2, e133.Google ScholarPubMed
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, World Food Program, & WHO (2017). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017. Rome: FAO. Retrieved from www.fao.org/3/a-I7695e.pdf.Google Scholar
Freedom House (2018). Freedom in the World 2018. Washington, DC: Freedom House.Google Scholar
GBD 2017 Mortality Collaborators (2018). Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality and life expectancy, 1950–2013; 2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet 392, 1684–1735.Google Scholar
Gilens, M. (2012). Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Halimi, S. (2013, May). Tyranny of the one per cent. Le Monde Diplomatique, English edition.Google Scholar
Harrington, B. (2016). Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hickel, J. (2016). The true extent of global poverty and hunger: questioning the good news narrative of the Millennium Development Goals. Third World Quarterly 37, 749–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hug, L., Sharrow, D., & You, D. (2017). Levels and Trends in Child Mortality: Report 2017: Estimates Developed by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation. New York: UNICEF. Retrieved from www.childmortality.org/files_v21/download/IGME%20report%202017%20child%20mortality%20final.pdf.Google Scholar
Jha, P., Brown, D., Nagelkerke, N., Slutsky, A. S., & Jamison, D. T. (2005). Global IDEA: Five members of the Global IDEA Scientific Advisory Committee respond to Dr. Moore and Colleagues. Canadian Medical Association Journal 172, 1538–1539.Google Scholar
Labonté, R., & Ruckert, A. (2019). Health Equity in a Globalizing Era: Past Challenges, Future Prospects. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lister, J., & Labonté, R. (2009). Globalization and health systems change, in Labonté, R., et al. (eds.), Globalization and Health: Pathways, Evidence and Policy. New York: Routledge, pp. 181–212.Google Scholar
Louzada, M., Ricardo, C. Z., Steele, E. M., Levy, R. B., Cannon, G., & Monteiro, C. A. (2018). The share of ultra-processed foods determines the overall nutritional quality of diets in Brazil. Public Health Nutrition 21, 94–102.Google Scholar
Malik, V. S., Willett, W. C., & Hu, F. B. (2013). Global obesity: trends, risk factors and policy implications. Nature Reviews Endocrinology 9, 13–27.Google Scholar
Martínez Steele, E., Popkin, B. M., Swinburn, B., & Monteiro, C. A. (2017). The share of ultra-processed foods and the overall nutritional quality of diets in the US: evidence from a nationally representative cross-sectional study. Population Health Metrics 15, 6.Google Scholar
McIntyre, D., Meheus, F., & Røttingen, J. A. (2017). What level of domestic government health expenditure should we aspire to for universal health coverage? Health Economics, Policy and Law 12, 125–137.Google Scholar
Meheus, F., & McIntyre, D. (2017). Fiscal space for domestic funding of health and other social services. Health Economics, Policy and Law 12, 159–177.Google Scholar
Mendez, M. A., Monteiro, C. A., & Popkin, B. M. (2005). Overweight exceeds underweight among women in most developing countries. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, 714–721.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B. (2016). Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Monteiro, C. A., Moubarac, J. C., Cannon, G., Ng, S. W., & Popkin, B. (2013). Ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system. Obesity Reviews 14, 21–28.Google Scholar
Monteiro, C. A., Conde, W. L., & Popkin, B. M. (2004). The burden of disease from undernutrition and overnutrition in countries undergoing rapid nutrition transition: a view from Brazil. American Journal of Public Health 94, 433–434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monteiro, C. A., Moubarac, J. C., Levy, R. B., et al. (2018). Household availability of ultra-processed foods and obesity in nineteen European countries. Public Health Nutrition 21, 18–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moodie, R., Stuckler, D., Monteiro, C., et al. (2013). Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries. Lancet 381, 670–679.Google Scholar
Moser, K., Shkolnikov, V., & Leon, D. (2007). World mortality 1950–2000: divergence replaces convergence from the late 1980s, in Caraël, M., & Glynn, J. R. (eds.), HIV, Resurgent Infections and Population Change in Africa. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Netherlands, pp. 11–25. DOI:10.1007/978–1-4020–6174-5_1.Google Scholar
Murray, C. J. L., Kulkarni, S. C., Michaud, C., et al. (2006). Eight Americas: investigating mortality disparities across races, counties, and race-counties in the United States. PLoS Medicine 3, e260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muzaka, V. (2014). Trade rules and intellectual property protection for pharmaceuticals, in Brown, G., Yamey, G., & Wamala, S. (eds.) The Handbook of Global Health Policy. New York: Wiley, pp. 409–424.Google Scholar
Ngugi, F. (2017). What makes Luanda most expensive city in the world? Face2Face Africa, https://face2faceafrica.com/article/luanda-expensive-2.Google Scholar
Omran, A. R. (1971). The epidemiologic transition: a theory of the epidemiology of population change. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49, 509–538.Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2014). Illicit Flows from Developing Countries: Measuring OECD Responses. Paris: OECD. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/dac/governance-development/IFF_R5_13mars14.pdf.Google Scholar
Ottersen, O. P., Dasgupta, J., Blouin, C., et al. (2014). The political origins of health inequity: prospects for change. Lancet 383, 630–667.Google Scholar
Page, B. I. & Bartels, L. M. (2013). Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans. Perspectives on Politics 11, 51–73.Google Scholar
Pedrique, B., Strub-Wourgaft, N., Some, C., et al. (2013). The drug and vaccine landscape for neglected diseases (2000–2011): a systematic assessment. Lancet Global Health 1, e371–e379.Google Scholar
Perez-Padilla, R., Schilmann, A., & Riojas-Rodriguez, H. (2010). Respiratory health effects of indoor air pollution (Review article). International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease 14, 1079–1086.Google Scholar
Perry, R. T., Gacic-Dobo, M., Dabbagh, A., et al. (2014). Global control and regional elimination of measles, 2000–2012. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 63, 103–107.Google ScholarPubMed
Phillips, T. (2008, June 20). High above Sao Paulo’s choked streets, the rich cruise a new highway. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/brazil.Google Scholar
Pickett, K. E., & Wilkinson, R. G. (2015). Income inequality and health: a causal review. Social Science & Medicine 128, 316–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pogge, T. (2001). Priorities of global justice. Metaphilosophy 32, 6–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pogge, T. (2004). Relational conceptions of justice: responsibilities for health outcomes, in Anand, S., Peter, F., & Sen, A. (eds.), Public Health, Ethics and Equity. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, pp. 135–161.Google Scholar
Pogge, T. (2007). Severe poverty as a human rights violation, in Pogge, T. (ed.), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–53.Google Scholar
Popkin, B. M. (2006). Global nutrition dynamics: the world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 84, 289–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preston, S. H. (2007). The changing relation between mortality and level of economic development. International Journal of Epidemiology 36, 484–490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prüss-Ustün, A., Bartram, J., Clasen, T., et al. (2014). Burden of disease from inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene in low- and middle-income settings: a retrospective analysis of data from 145 countries. Tropical Medicine & International Health 19, 894–905.Google Scholar
Reddy, S., & Lahoti, R. (2016). $1.90 per day: what does it say? The new international poverty line. New Left Review, new series (97), 106–127.Google Scholar
Revollo, P. E., Mariotti, C., Mager, F., & Jacobs, D. (2019). Public Good or Private Wealth? Methodology Note. Oxford, UK: Oxfam International. Retrieved from https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620599/tb-public-good-or-private-wealth-methodology-note-210119-en.pdf.Google Scholar
Riley, J. C. (2005). Estimates of regional and global life expectancy, 1800–2001. Population and Development Review 31, 537–543.Google Scholar
Riley, J. C. (2008). Low Income, Social Growth and Good Health: A History of Twelve Countries. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, J. D. (2012). Achieving universal health coverage in low-income settings. Lancet 380, 944–947.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schrecker, T. (2013). Interrogating scarcity: how to think about “resource-scarce settings.” Health Policy and Planning 28, 400–409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schrecker, T. (2018). On health inequalities, Davos, and deadly neoliberalism. Policies for Equitable Access to Health, www.peah.it/2018/01/on-health-inequalities-davos-and-deadly-neoliberalism/Google Scholar
Sengupta, A. (2013). Universal health coverage: beyond rhetoric (Occasional Paper No. 20), Municipal Services Project, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Retrieved from www.municipalservicesproject.org/sites/municipalservicesproject.org/files/publications/OccasionalPaper20_Sengupta_Universal_Health_Coverage_Beyond_Rhetoric_Nov2013_0.pdf.Google Scholar
Shaefer, H. L., Wu, P., & Edin, K. (2017). Can poverty in America be compared to conditions in the world’s poorest countries? American Journal of Medical Research 4, 84–92.Google Scholar
Shorrocks, A., Davies, J., & Lluberas, R. (2018). Global Wealth Report 2018. Zurich: Credit Suisse Research Institute. Retrieved from www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/publications/research-institute/global-wealth-report-2018-en.pdf.Google Scholar
Stenberg, K., Hanssen, O., Edejer, T. T.-T., et al. (2017). Financing transformative health systems towards achievement of the health Sustainable Development Goals: a model for projected resource needs in 67 low-income and middle-income countries. Lancet Global Health 5, e875–e887.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, J. (2016, August 10). The problem with Europe is the euro. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/10/joseph-stiglitz-the-problem-with-europe-is-the-euro.Google Scholar
Stubbs, T., Kentikelenis, A., Stuckler, D., McKee, M., & King, L. (2017). The impact of IMF conditionality on government health expenditure: a cross-national analysis of 16 West African nations. Social Science & Medicine 174, 220–227.Google Scholar
‘t Hoen, E., Berger, J., Calmy, A., & Moon, S. (2011). Driving a decade of change: HIV/AIDS, patents and access to medicines for all. Journal of the International AIDS Society 14, 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNAIDS (2015). How AIDS Changed Everything – MDG6: 15 Years, 15 Lessons of Hope from the AIDS Response. Geneva: UNAIDS. Retrieved from www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/MDG6Report_en.pdf.Google Scholar
UNAIDS (2018a). Fact Sheet: World AIDS Day 2018. Geneva: UNAIDS. Retrieved from www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/UNAIDS_FactSheet_en.pdf.Google Scholar
UNAIDS (2018b). Miles to Go: Closing Gaps, Breaking Barriers, Righting Injustices. Geneva: UNAIDS. Retrieved from www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/miles-to-go_en.pdf.Google Scholar
UNICEF & WHO (2015). Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2003). The Challenge of Slums. London: Earthscan. Retrieved from www.unhabitat.org/pmss/getPage.asp?page=bookView&book=1156.Google Scholar
Valencia, M. (2013, February 16). Storm survivors: a special report on offshore finance. The Economist. Retrieved from www.economist.com/special-report/2013/02/16/storm-survivors.Google Scholar
Whitmee, S., Haines, A., Beyrer, C., et al. (2015). Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. Lancet 386, 1973–2028.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2010). The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
World Bank & IMF (2016). Global Monitoring Report 2015/16: Development Goals in an Era of Demographic Change. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/pubdocs/publicdoc/2015/10/503001444058224597/Global-Monitoring-Report-2015.pdf.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO) (2010). World Health Report 2010: Health Systems Financing – The Path to Universal Coverage. Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from www.who.int/whr/2010/en/index.html.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO) (2015a). Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015. Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/189242/1/9789241565066_eng.pdf?ua=1.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO) (2015b). State of Inequality: Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/164590/1/9789241564908_eng.pdf?ua=1&ua=1.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO) (2018). Tuberculosis (Fact Sheet), www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (WHO) (2019). Malaria (Fact Sheet), www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria.Google Scholar
World Health Organization & UNICEF (2017). Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: 2017 Update and SDG Baselines. Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from www.who.int/entity/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/launch-version-report-jmp-water-sanitation-hygiene.pdf?ua=1.Google Scholar
World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group & United Nations Population Division (2019). Trends in Maternal Mortality 2000 to 2017. Geneva: WHO. Retrieved from: www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Maternal_mortality_report.pdf.Google Scholar
Yates, R. (2009). Universal health care and the removal of user fees. Lancet 373, 2078–2081.Google Scholar
Zhang, H., & Cai, B. (2003). The impact of tobacco on lung health in China. Respirology 8, 17–21.Google Scholar
Zucman, G. (2019). Global Wealth Inequality (NBER Working Paper No. 25462). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/Zucman2019.pdf.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×