Gerrit Bos, Maimonides Medical Aphorisms, Treatises 16-21: A parallel Arabic-English edition (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016), pp. xxix, 204, $89.95, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-842-52843-6.

Finally, just over halfway through the book, issues that concern lower-income countries are addressed. After placing the public health of developing countries in historical context, Berridge describes the complex health burden that these countries have today – both communicable diseases, in areas where health coverage and access to health technologies are neglected, and non-communicable diseases associated with lifestyle and behaviour which cross all geographic and demographic areas. It is in these remaining chapters that the issues related to globalisation and health are also further described – clearly leaving the reader with the understanding that borders do not stop the spread of infectious disease, and that they also fail to stop the spread of risk factors of non-communicable diseases such as advertisement and other influences on behaviour in an interconnected and globalised world. Public health in the world today has become complex, and created a new concept of health security as enshrined in the International Health Regulations (IHR), which Berridge mentions. The IHR, in fact, an agreed treaty by which all countries are required to develop eight core capacities in public health, will hopefully provide the technical fixes necessary to protect populations from the international spread of disease. But inequalities will remain, and it is these, as Berridge points out, that require cross-sector solutions which most governments have yet to master. Public Health, A Very Short Introduction, is an excellent primer for those who want to learn about the history of public health in England (and by extrapolation in other countries that have rapidly industrialised during the past centuries); to understand how public health in developing countries evolved from the time when medical missionaries introduced western understanding of tropical diseases; and to better grasp how, in today’s globalised world, we must work together in public health to ensure the health security of individuals and communities. But at the same time we are left with the understanding that protecting and improving the health of individuals and communities requires complex innovations and investment to mitigate the social determinants of health, a task which governments and those working in public health have not yet been able to fully accomplish.