Category: Global Health

World Health Assembly delegates agree new five-year strategic plan

5/26/2018

"World Health Assembly delegates today agreed an ambitious new strategic plan for the next five years. The Organization’s 13th General Programme of Work (GPW) is designed to help the world achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – with a particular focus on SDG3: ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages by 2030. It sets three targets: to ensure that by 2023, 1 billion more people benefit from universal health coverage; 1 billion more people are better protected from health emergencies; and 1 billion more people enjoy better health and wellbeing. WHO estimates that achieving this “triple billion” target could save 29 million lives.Speaking to the Health Assembly, Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told delegates that the new strategic plan was ambitious because "it must be". Delegates noted that the Organization will need to make a number of strategic shifts in order to achieve these targets, notably to step up its public health leadership; focus on impact in countries; and ensure that people can access authoritative and strategic information on matters that affect people’s health." Topics such as climate change, adolescent health, conflict zones such as Palestine and NCD's include references to schools. Read more...
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Documents & Debates at the World Education Forum in Korea

10/6/2015

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Since ISHN is active in the global school health level, I have been following the documents and debates that have occurred about the role of education in the new 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. I am usually pretty good at this type of thing but by the time the various documents emerged from the peculiar dance of the UN, I was lost. It turns out I may not be alone. Several articles in Volume 52, 2015 of Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training reflect on the World Education Forum (WEF) held in August 2015 in Incheon, South Korea. There were three documents in play; a "targets" document describing outputs and indicators; a "'framework for action (FFA) which is essentially a plan and a "declaration" for the WEF Conference to consider. At the end of the WEF, only one of these documents came to the floor for ratification by delegates. In the very last session, delegates were asked if they had any comments on the FFA (no one dared to do so) and the "targets", which have been dealt with in as committee, was folded into the FFA document. In other words, easy consensus and no haggling over targets. If you read through the articles in the special issue of this journal, you can get even more confused but it appears that UNESCO was guiding the process so that these education sector discussions would not get out of step with a parallel set of UN meetings discussing all of the global goals, including education. If you read the articles in this issue, you will also learn that the language of the Incheon Declaration is stronger and more coherent than the "targets" document but it may be, once again in education, come to be that "what is measurable gets measured" and "what is measured ends up being what matters". Read more>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)

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WHO Uses NCD Prevention to Re-Invent Itself

9/30/2015

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An article in Issue #3, 2015 of Population and Development Review describes how the World Health Organization (WHO) has used the issue of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD's) as a focus and thereby helped to re-establish its credibility. The authors describe how WHO has used NCD's in an opportunistic manner. "Chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries have recently provoked a surge of public interest. This article examines the policy literature—notably the archives and publications of the World Health Organization (WHO), which has dominated this field—to analyze the emergence and consolidation of this new agenda. Starting with programs to control cardiovascular disease in the 1970s, experts from Eastern and Western Europe had by the late 1980s consolidated a program for the prevention of NCD risk factors at the WHO. NCDs remained a relatively minor concern until the collaboration of World Bank health economists with WHO epidemiologists led to the Global Burden of Disease study that provided an “evidentiary breakthrough” for NCD activism by quantifying the extent of the problem. Soon after, WHO itself, facing severe criticism, underwent major reform. NCD advocacy contributed to revitalizing WHO's normative and coordinative functions. By leading a growing advocacy coalition, within which The Lancet played a key role, WHO established itself as a leading institution in this domain. However, ever-widening concern with NCDs has not yet led to major reallocation of funding in favor of NCD programs in the developing world." This strategy of health organizations jumping onto an emerging issue to secure resources and credibility is not unique to WHO. The question which needs to be answered is what happens when interest/support in that particular issue wanes? Read more >> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)

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Medicalization of Global Health & NCD Plan

2/19/2015

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(From the ISHN Member information service) It is always nice to find someone that agrees with you. It is also disconcerting to find that they made the point before you. Our analysis of the WHO 2013-20 action plan on NCD noted that it, and the health ministries around the world, were retreating from a population, health promotion approach to a narrow, medical strategy. Our ongoing review of journals found a similar, earlier argument in the 2014 issue of Global health Action. The author, writing in a series on the medicalization of global health, comments on the "medicalization of NCD efforts". She says "The 2011 UN Summit, WHO 25×25 targets, and support of major medical and advocacy organisations have propelled prominence of NCDs on the global health agenda. NCDs are by definition ‘diseases’ so already medicalized. But their social drivers and impacts are acknowledged, which demand a broad, whole-of-society approach. However, while both individual- and population-level targets are identified in the current NCD action plans, most recommended strategies tend towards the individualistic approach and do not address root causes of the NCD problem. These so-called population strategies risk being reduced to expectations of individual and behavioural change, which may have limited success and impact and deflect attention away from government policies or regulation of industry. Industry involvement in NCD agenda-setting props up a medicalized approach to NCDs: food and drink companies favour focus on individual choice and responsibility, and pharmaceutical and device companies favour calls for expanded access to medicines and treatment coverage. Current NCD framing creates expanded roles for physicians, healthcare workers, medicines and medical monitoring. The challenge and opportunity lie in defining priorities and developing strategies that go beyond a narrow medicalized framing of the NCD problem and its solutions". Read more>>

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World Health Assembly delegates agree new five-year strategic plan

Documents & Debates at the World Education Forum in Korea

WHO Uses NCD Prevention to Re-Invent Itself

Medicalization of Global Health & NCD Plan

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World Health Assembly delegates agree new five-year strategic plan

Documents & Debates at the World Education Forum in Korea

WHO Uses NCD Prevention to Re-Invent Itself

Medicalization of Global Health & NCD Plan

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