Health for Some: Death, Disease and Disparity in a Globalizing
Era
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Ronald Labonte is Canada Research Chair in Globalization/Health
Equity at the Institute of Population Health, University of Ot-
tawa.
Ted Schrecker, senior policy researcher at the Institute of
Population Health, University of Ottawa.
Amit Sen Gupta, Centre for Technology and Development, is Secre-
tary of the All India Peoples Science Network, and co-convenor
of the Peoples' Health Movement (India) and member of the Movement's
International Steering Group.
CSJ Research and Education, Toronto - April 2005
Available online as PDF file [134 pp. 780 kB] at:
http://www.socialjustice.org/pdfs/HealthforSome.pdf
"...The fundamental health challenges inherent in our contempo-
rary global political economy - equity and sustainability - have
been central to the struggle for health within countries for the
past century. Addressing them requires some form of market-
correcting system of wealth redistribution between, as well as
within, nations. As Birdsall argues, globalization as we know it
today is fundamentally asymmetric. In its benefits and its
risks, it works less well for the currently poor countries and
for poor households within developing countries.
Because markets at the national level are asymmetric, modern
capitalist economies have social contracts, progressive tax sys-
tems, and laws and regulations to manage asymmetries and market
failures. At the global level, there is no real equivalent to
national governments to manage global markets, though they are
bigger, deeper and if anything more asymmetric. They work better
for the rich; and their risks and failures hurt the poor more"
(Birdsall 2002). The national and global are linked. Globaliza-
tion's present form limits the macroeconomic, development and
health policy space within rich and poor nations alike..."
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Can somebody review this and post a review in the list?
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn