Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 13
Forging the trade link
benedikte Dal, laura Sunderland, and nick Drager
Health is increasingly central to foreign policy. Indeed, health is being explicitly
incorporated into trade agreements, so that practitioners of global health diplomacy
must be innovative in resolving the growing tensions between trade and health. this
chapter begins by exploring public health in today's globalised world. It then examines
the concept of global health diplomacy and its ever more important role in the
relationship between health and trade. It discusses the role of the Intergovernmental
working Group on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property (IGwG)
of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WHO's efforts to achieve policy
coherence at the national and international levels.
Public Health in a Globalising World
because health is now central to the global policy agenda, there is a new context
for public health. the interdependence produced by globalisation has broken
down traditional ways of conceptualising and organising the medical, economic,
political, and technological means to improve health. nowhere is this transformation
more apparent than in the rise of health as a foreign policy and trade concern.
this relationship between health, foreign policy, and trade is vital, complex,
and frequently debated. to craft health policy today, governments, international
institutions, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) must find mechanisms to
manage health risks that spill into and out of every country (Drager and Fidler 2007).
Improving health outcomes is critical to achieving the benchmarks of success that
the international community has set for itself, such as the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs).
countries now must take into account cross-border spill-ins and spillovers when
crafting health policy. Yet there is still a tendency to look inward, in the country
and in the sector, when national health plans are made. the wHo, which under its
constitution works with its member states toward the attainment of the highest possible
level of health for all people, is trying to get actors in domestic health planning to
look outward—into threats that spill into and out of the country. countries remain
core actors in terms of defining health policy. They therefore must be encouraged to
