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Medical Missions: Care and Controversy

This article calls into question the provision of medical services by Christian missionaries in Honduras are called into question, asking whether they in fact damage the communities they are aiming to help. (Sharon McLennan, Just Change, July 2006)

http://www.dev-zone.org/downloads/jc6mclennan.pdf

(Added: Mon Aug 07 2006   Hits: 47)

More equitable pricing for essential drugs: what do we mean and what are the issues?

This paper examines differential pricing (also referred to as "equity pricing" or "preferential pricing"): Background paper for the WHO-WTO secretariat workshop on differential pricing and financing of essential drugs, Hosbjor, Norway, 8-11 April 2001.

http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/who_background_e.pdf

(Added: Mon Jun 18 2001   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 154)

More links list

Health Action International's extensive links list

http://www.haiweb.org/links/links.html

(Added: Fri May 25 2001   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 160)

New global health fund

British Medical Journal. The gap between the rich and poor has widened steadily. Estimates based on World Bank data suggest that over 40% of the 614 million people in less developed countries live in absolute poverty and that average life expectancy is now 25 years less than it is in developed countries.2 Ten years ago the countries of the OECD promised to scale up their development assistance. Since then the flow of aid has actually decreased ...

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7298/1321

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 131)

Patent Sense on Drugs

The UK Guardinan. April 05 2001. Sarah Boseley's article (Blair sides with drug giants, March 31) and the related leader missed the point of our approach to improving access to medicines for developing countries.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4165435,00.html

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 104)

Patents versus Patients: Five years after the Doha Declaration

Five years ago, members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) signed a ministerial agreement to ensure that intellectual property rules would no longer obstruct developing countries' efforts to protect public health. This report finds that since then, however, little has changed. Patented medicines continue to be priced out of reach for the world's poorest people. Trade rules remain a major barrier to accessing affordable versions of patented medicines (generic medicines). The prevalence of debilitating and life-threatening diseases in poor countries is growing, but medicines are simply not available. Urgent action is needed. (Oxfam, November 2006)

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/health/downloads/bp95_patents.pdf

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 126)

People's Rural Health Watch on India's National Rural Health Mission

An informal discussion of access and rights to healthcare in rural india co-hosted by Panos London and Healthlink Worldwide

http://www.research4development.info/news.asp?articleID=50219

(Added: Fri May 16 2008   Hits: 10)

Privatization and Its Discontents - The Evolving Chinese Health Care System

This article from the New England Journal of Medicine looks at the impact of health care privatisation in China. It illustrates how privatisation has led to many Chinese having to forgo health care, and how privatisation hindered China's response to SARS. The article concludes by looking at what the Chinese government has done in recent years to mitigate the adverse impacts of privatisation.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/11/1165

(Added: Fri Mar 30 2007   Hits: 112)

Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights [pdf 4.69mb]

An independent Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health presented its report on April 3 to the World Health Organisation. Over half of the people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia lack regular access to existing essential medicines because they cannot afford them, or because the health system in their country is too weak. Apart from access to existing medicines, some health products specifically for diseases which disproportionately affect developing countries are simply not developed at all due to the lack of a sustainable market. The relationship between intellectual property rights, innovation and public health has been at the heart of debate on these issues. The report recommends key actions needed to ensure that poor people in developing countries have access to existing and new products to diagnose, treat and prevent the diseases which affect them most. (Commission of the WHO, 3 April 2006)

http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/documents/thereport/CIPIH23032006.pdf

(Added: Mon Apr 10 2006   Hits: 103)

Salvation is Cheap - an interactive movie

Aids is a global epidemic, affecting as many as 40 million people. 30 million of these are African, yet the vast majority cannot receive the anti-retroviral drugs that have changed the lives of victims in the west. In collaboration with the photographer Gideon Mendel, Guardian Unlimited presents an interactive movie telling the personal stories of South Africans who experience this harsh divide. You will need the free download of Macromedia Shockwave Flash 5 to watch this movie. (By Gideon Mendel, The Guardian, 2005)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/mendel.swf

(Added: Fri Mar 24 2006   Hits: 85)

Socio-economic Causes and Consequences of the HIV Epidemic in Southern Africa: A Case Study of Namibia

By Desmond Cohen. UNDP Issues Paper No.31 The Roles of Income, Occupational Status and Poverty, Economic Organisation and Public Policy, Social Organisation, Gender and Public Policy, Social Learning. Epidemiological Situation in Southern Africa, Demographic Effects of HIV and AIDS, Estimating the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Human Development. Sectoral impact, Households, Productive Sectors.

http://www.undp.org/hiv/publications/issues/english/issue31e.htm

(Added: Wed Jun 13 2001   Modified: Tue Dec 13 2005   Hits: 139)

South American Ministers Vow to Protect Access to Medicines

The Ministers of Health of ten South American countries have issued a joint declaration on intellectual property committing themselves to avoid "TRIPS plus" provisions-clauses that are stricter than the "Trade-Related Intellectual Property" measures stipulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO)-in bilateral and regional trade agreements. Unfortunately, several of the countries that signed on have already acceded to these measures in Free Trade Agreement negotiations with the United States. Still, the declaration represents an important move to establish a united position in the face of U.S. and other developed country pressures to provide extended patent exclusivity to transnational pharmaceutical companies. Such resistance is necessary for the health of poor people. (Martin Khor, International Relations Centre, 15 June 2006)

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3320

(Added: Thu Jun 22 2006   Modified: Tue Aug 15 2006   Hits: 171)

Special Session Bulletin

As the landmark General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS approaches, an electronic news bulletin is being published to keep participants and observers informed of new developments

http://www.un.org/ga/aids/bulletin.htm

(Added: Tue Jun 19 2001   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 127)

State of the World's Mothers Report 2006

For most children in the developing world, the most dangerous day of their lives is their birthday. Of more than 10 million children under the age of 5 who die each year, about 1 in 5 - an estimated 2 million babies - die within the first 24 hours of life, according to the seventh annual State of the World's Mothers report issued by Save the Children, a global independent humanitarian organisation. According to the report, an additional 1 million babies die during days 2 through 7. A total of 4 million babies die during the first month of life. (Save the Children, 2006)

http://www.savethechildren.net/australia/publications/mothers_report/mothers_report.html

(Added: Wed May 10 2006   Hits: 59)

The Case for Childhood Immunization

In this advocacy document, the Children's Vaccine Program (CVP) looks at the past 50 years of vaccines and immunisations. They examine the lack of vaccines in resource-poor countries and the lack of initiative in fully developed countries - both which can lead to childhood illness, death, and resurgences of old diseases once considered fully eradicated (Children's Vacine Program, 2002).

http://www.childrensvaccine.org/files/CVP_Occ_Paper5.pdf

(Added: Thu Dec 20 2007   Hits: 28)

The Politics of Patents and Drugs in Brazil and Mexico: The industrial bases of health activism

This paper analyzes the politics of intellectual property (IP) and public health in Brazil and Mexico. Both countries introduced pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s, to comply with their international obligations.(Ken Shadlen, December 2007)

http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/07-05PoliticsOfPatents.pdf

(Added: Tue Jan 08 2008   Hits: 27)

The State of the World's Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible [PDF]

This 2006 report by UNICEF assesses the world's most vulnerable children, whose rights to a safe and healthy childhood are exceptionally difficult to protect. Millions of children are growing up beyond the reach of development campaigns and are often invisible in everything from public debate and legislation, to statistics and news stories. In the past, UNICEF has reported extensively on how poverty, HIV/AIDS and armed conflict are undermining childhood itself. These factors, as well as weak governance and discrimination, deprive children of protection from abuse and exploitation, and exclude them from school, healthcare and other essential services at alarming rates. The report outlines concrete actions that can be taken by governments, civil society, the private sector, donors and the media to help prevent these children from falling between the cracks. (UNICEF, 2006)

http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/pdfs/sowc06_fullreport.pdf

(Added: Thu Mar 23 2006   Modified: Mon Jul 02 2007   Hits: 237)

Treatment Action Campaign

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was launched on 10 December 1998, International Human Rights Day. Its main objective is to campaign for greater access to treatment for all South Africans, by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments. TAC campaigns against the view that AIDS is a 'death sentence'.

http://www.tac.org.za/

(Added: Fri Apr 11 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 133)

Undue Punishment? Aboriginal People and Torres Strait islanders in prison: An unacceptable reality

This report card highlights the chronic health situation of Indigenous Australians, and the horrifying effects of prison on the Indigenous population. (Australian Medical Association, May 2006)

http://www.ama.com.au/web.nsf/doc/WEEN-6PU8QN

(Added: Tue Jun 06 2006   Modified: Thu Jun 22 2006   Hits: 59)

Wealthier and Healthier? China's Recent Health Achievements in Comparative Perspective

This paper examines whether China's remarkable reduction in income poverty has been accompanied by comparable progress in health. Its findings are fourfold: (a) province-level rates of improvement in life expectancy were higher in the 1990s than in the 1970s and the 1980s, and were lowest in the 1980s. (b) Even in the 1990s, when the province-level rates of improvement in life expectancy were highest, they were lower than for many countries with similar initial life expectancy level (although higher than the average for all such countries). (c) China's life expectancy improvement between 1980 and 2000 was achieved much more quickly by almost all other countries considered, and in particular by most lower middle income countries that had similar life expectancy improvements. Similar conclusions are drawn from an analysis of China's life expectancy improvements relative to two other sets of comparator countries: selected presently rich countries and high-growth East Asian countries. (d) Even those Chinese provinces which performed best over the period experienced rates of improvement that were significantly lower than for comparator countries.

http://search.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918623

(Added: Tue Apr 17 2007   Hits: 105)

World Health Assembly 2006: Resolution - Public health, innovation, essential health research and intellectual property rights: towards a global strat

This document makes recommendations to member states and to the Director-General on ensuring that progress in science and medicine translates into safe and affordable health products to respond to all patients' needs, especially those living in poverty.

http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA59/A59_R24-en.pdf

(Added: Mon Jun 26 2006   Hits: 54)

World Health Organisation - Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy (EDM)

Provides WHO Member States in developing national drug policies, drug financing and supply strategies and promotes rational prescribing and rational use of drugs through its country activities. Responsible for the development, harmonization and promotion of international standards of modern and traditional medicines, and for the exchange of pharmaceutical information with the private and pubic sector.

http://www.who.int/medicines/

(Added: Fri May 25 2001   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 151)

World Health Report 2006 - Working Together for Health

7 April is World Health Day, and the focus of this year's celebrations is health workers, who form the heart of any health system. The report contains an expert assessment of the current crisis in the global health workforce and ambitious proposals to tackle it over the next ten years, starting immediately. The report reveals an estimated shortage of almost 4.3 million doctors, midwives, nurses and support workers worldwide. The shortage is most severe in the poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where health workers are most needed. Focusing on all stages of the health workers' career lifespan from entry to health training, to job recruitment through to retirement, the report lays out a ten-year action plan in which countries can build their health workforces, with the support of global partners. (World Health Organisation, 2006)

http://www.who.int/whr/2006/en/index.html

(Added: Fri Apr 07 2006   Hits: 251)

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