Health is Global: A UK Government Strategy – ‘This strategy has teeth’.
Photograph courtesy of the CDC Foundation.
‘Our goal is to improve the health of the populations of the UK and of the world’.
Last week saw the launch of the UK government’s five-year strategy to improve global health, co-sponsored by the Lancet. After an impressive 18 month consultation period the government launched the report in London on Tuesday 30th September. The strategy is also this week’s Lancet Student Recommends.
The event was well attended by representatives from across the global health community, including VSO, Oxfam, WHO, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Alma Mata.
Those who attended the launch enjoyed speeches from the Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson, Chief Medical Advisor Sir Liam Donaldson, and The Lancet Student’s very own Dr. Rhona MacDonald.
In her speech, Rhona praised the strategy for being ‘truly collaborative’, saying that ‘the government has not tried to go it alone’, in a report which puts the Department for International Development, the Department of Health, and the Foreign Commonwealth Office on the same page with regard to global health. Funding has also been made available for a new Centre on Global Health and Foreign Policy at the Royal Institute for International Affairs.
Recognising the impact of globalisation and migration on the health of the ‘interdependent world’, the strategy emphasises global health as a ‘force for good’; a stepping stone towards increased security and economic development. The concept of health as a foreign policy reflects the UK government’s understanding that achieving environmental, physical and economic security overseas is a pre-requisite for the UK to achieve the same.
Global health security
Efforts to improve health security will include a focus on climate change, supporting the International Climate Change Network to educate people about the social, economic and environmental impacts of climate change, and encouraging the health-sector to take the lead in reducing greenhouse emissions. The UK’s National Health Service will set an example by continuing to work towards a 15% reduction in its energy use by 2010.
The report echoes several of global health network Medsin’s campaign focuses for the coming academic year. Read more about climate change and the UK health sector’s role as part of Medsin-UK’s Health Planet Campaign.
Stronger health systems
Another of the five key areas for action highlighted by the strategy is health systems strengthening. Effective health systems require a solid infrastructure and sufficient staff in order to ensure that health care is available and accessible to all who need it. The report promises to address the global shortage of health workers, a deficit that is estimated by WHO to be over four million, and support stronger health systems through the International Health Partnership (IHP), a horizontal approach to improving health care provision. Lord Crisp’s 2007 report identifies ways in which the UK and developing countries can mutually benefit from global health partnerships, by encouraging brain circulation through exchange of health workers. This, together with the UK’s aim towards self-sufficiency, will hopefully go some way towards tackling the global brain drain. Read more about Medsin-UK’s Health Systems Campaign and how you can get involved here.
Fair trade in the health sector
The report cites trade reform as having the potential to ‘transform the lives of poor people’ and ‘ultimately reduce dependency on aid’. Facilitating access to essential medicines for HIV and AIDS, malaria and TB plays an integral in improving health and increasing life-expectancy of people from poorer countries. The report promises to support developing countries in their use of the TRIPS agreement to improve access to life-saving drugs. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines works to determine how universities, (and their medical students like you!) can help ensure that biomedical end products, such as drugs, are made more accessible in poor countries.
The strategy is ambitious in its aims, each of which represents a huge undertaking in its own right, making five years seem a very short time to achievement. During the launch Edward Stourton asked Alan Johnson and Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Mark-Malloch Brown if the strategy would have made any difference had it been released before the Iraq war, to which the response was a resounding ‘No’. The question is whether the report will make any difference now?
‘In our interdependent world, the health of all people’s is everyone’s priority – and good health for all must be our shared ambition’.
Vanessa Jessop
Fourth year Medical Student
University of Edinburgh
vanessaannjessop@gmail.com
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