How Can We Improve Global Health?

Authors Katri Bertram, Ngozi Erondu, and Madhukar Pai write, “Historically, global health has been mainly a top-down, North-to-South enterprise led primarily by white, elite men. (Bertram)” The repercussions of the system’s failures have made themselves more prominent than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic; lack of transparency from medical companies, the disproportionate distribution of resources, and unnecessary reserves have resulted in an underrepresentation of low-income populations and countries. 

Within the medical field, there are often disproportionate representatives for criteria that are affected by health differently, for example gender. The article Silenced Voices in Global Health explain that both women and people from low income countries are underrepresented in leadership positions within the health community. This case of not being taken seriously can be detrimental to the people they represent and exposes the hierarchy among gender, race, and ethnicity. This causes lack of action towards the serious health problems in lower income and struggling countries. One solution to this problem would be to diversify the leadership positions that control global health, including putting people from developing countries in charge and the ability to control resources and necessities that their own country requires, considering these professionals will be the ones who know what their country needs. An improvement that the World Health Organization could implement for lower income countries would be adequate training and resources for these specific places. As discussed in class, this would provide medical care to those in developing or rural areas who would not usually have easy access to these resources. Having a professional in an area with no medical care would improve the stability of life among the citizens. 

One concern that has been prominent recently among the major powers of the world is the excess reserves of medical resources, such as vaccines for the COVID pandemic. Although it is not entirely the fault of the health organizations in the United States because there is a large portion of the population that has refused the vaccine, there are better options than currently keeping millions of vaccines that will go to no one. In the case of requiring economic profit, the US could sell vaccines to developing countries that are disproportionately affected by COVID, however with the low income of said countries, profit may be scarce. On the other hand, the distribution of the reserves would be beneficial to the relationship between the two countries; reputation and image of a global superpower is important in order to stay socially connected to other countries. 

The reason why solutions like these are so difficult to achieve is because of how natural it is to act in self interest. With how globalized the world has become, acting in self interest as a state or country affects others more drastically than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic proved this and exposed the many problems within the global health system and the WHO. The rapid spread between states, countries and continents showed us how connected the world is both socially and economically, and is the reason why reformative measures must be taken in order to prevent another pandemic.


Sources:

Bertram, Katri. “Silenced Voices in Global Health.” Think Global Health, 3 June 2020, https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/silenced-voices-global-health. Accessed 12 April 2022.



Comments

  1. BlakeApril 27, 2022 at 7:58 AM

    This post does a great job of showing that most states act in their own self-interest when it comes to their health system. During a time of a pandemic with COVID-19 we saw that while states were doing their best to contain the virus in their own state, most of the problems came from across the border.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cassie LawlerMay 4, 2022 at 12:27 PM

    I definitely agree with your perspective about the inherent nature of people and states to act in their own self interest. I think that comparing the IR lens to an economic standpoint would be really interesting to see how the two schools of thought are different.

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