Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
society can become in mobilising money. local networks and faith groups innovated
in the campaign against aIDS in southern africa, as besada notes. civil society also
drove change in the negotiation of the Framework convention on tobacco control
(Fctc). Increasingly civil society organisations are going global and becoming
central actors in the proliferating array of global health initiatives focussed on a
single disease (orbinski 2007).
Media coverage also makes a difference. In the case of SarS, as lo traces,
the media uncovered the chinese government's initial cover-up, and then that
government used the media to get the message out. Forman shows how american
civil society used the media during a presidential election campaign to change U.S.
policy on access to affordable medicine for HIv/aIDS.
national governments too are important sources of innovation, in both the
developed and the developing worlds. Yet in a paradox for standard realist theory,
it is often the most capable governments that innovate the least. thus the U.S.
government led the resistance against access to affordable medicines for HIv/aIDS,
and threatened and used trade sanctions, as cohen-Kohler and Forman relate. the
United States, Japan, and Germany were similarly opposed to the convention on
tobacco, as collin and lee show. nonetheless Japan forged the link between health
and gender and took the initiative at the G8 summit it hosted in okinawa in 2000,
which produced the Global Fund to Fight aIDS, tuberculosis, and Malaria at the
G8 hosted by Italy in Genoa in 2001. less capable countries such as canada have
been important innovators, as in the aftermath of SarS in anticipation of an avian
influenza pandemic, and in generic licensing of HIv/aIDS medicines for export
to poor countries. canada also, along with the U.S., pioneered the Global Health
Security Initiative (GHSI) in 2001. and russia as host of the G8 at St. Petersburg in
2006 held the first G8 meeting for health ministers.
Developing country governments are often a great source of innovation, even
when they lack some of the capabilities that those in rich countries assume are
necessary to provide public health. Singapore, in the case of SarS, and Zimbabwe,
in the case of HIv/aIDS, were innovators at home and led the way for others abroad.
thailand's 'trusted person' system worked well for malaria and could for avian
influenza. bennett concludes that thailand, chile, and even cuba are innovating in
ways that the North could borrow and benefit from. Developing country leadership
arose internationally in the case of tobacco, as collin and lee show. Most broadly,
as Forman notes, two thirds of all national constitutions include health and health
related rights. but, as Khoubessarian concludes, there is still a northern bias in the
many global health initiatives that have come.
other vibrant innovators include international institutions of a broadly
multilateral, plurilateral, and regional character, as formal organisations or as
informal institutions or initiatives, and as operated by leaders, ministers, or officials.
appendix 16-3 displays the leading actors in the vast array of international institutions
involved in global health governance now. Several others, such as the Asia-Pacific
economic cooperation (aPec) forum, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of
north america (SPP), the commonwealth, and la Francophonie could easily be
