Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
'reorient their health and foreign policies in ways that align their national interests
with the diplomatic, epidemiological and ethical realities of a globalized world'
(Drager and Fidler 2007). Domestic health planners must increasingly work with
their ministries of foreign affairs and trade and think more broadly outside their
mandate in order to resolve pressing health issues in a globalised world. Health
ministries must work to identify 'how they can best inform pre-negotiation trade
positions, provide input during negotiations, analyze the health costs and benefits of
proposed compromises and monitor the health impacts of trade agreements' (Drager
and Fidler 2007).
Domestic action alone is no longer sufficient to protect and assure population
health. collective action in essential, as is coordination of international policies.
the new global health context of new rules, actors, markets, and tools accordingly
requires new, innovative responses. Global governance needs rethinking in terms
of global health issues. the relationship between globalisation and global health is
increasingly complex, because of the growing integration of economies and societies
world-wide, across a wide range of spheres. Globalisation is a circular interaction
among three elements: cross-border flows of people, goods, services, money,
and ideas; the opening of economies; and the development of international rules and
institutions (see Drager and Sunderland 2007, 68-69). those rules and institutions
dealing with trade and health directly affect national economies and health-related
sectors and, ultimately, affect population health. this globalised reality of health has
created the phenomenon of global health diplomacy.
Global Health Diplomacy
Global health diplomacy reflects the reality that international diplomacy now
encompasses many traditionally so-called soft issues, such as health, that increasingly
have hard implications for national economies (Kickbusch, Silberschmidt, and
buss 2007). It brings together the disciplines of public health, international affairs,
management, law, and economics to focus on negotiations that shape, manage, and
influence the global policy environment for health. Global health diplomacy includes
negotiating for health across boundaries, influencing the global health architecture
and governance structures, ensuring access to global public goods for health, and
managing the relationship between foreign policy, trade, and health. according to
Ilona Kickbusch, Gaudenz Silberschmidt, and Paolo buss (2007, 230), the world
of global health diplomacy is one in which 'the art of diplomacy juggles with the
science of public health and concrete national interest balances with the abstract
collective concern of the larger international community in the face of intensive
lobbying and advocacy'.
both the wHo's Framework convention on tobacco control (Fctc) and revised
International Health Regulations ([IHR] 2005) are outcome of long negotiating
processes that involved multiple actors. The FCTC, the first international public
health treaty, reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health and was
