The 'global public good' (GPG) concept has gained increasing attention, in health as well as development circles. However, it has suffered in finding currency as a general tool for global resource mobilisation, and is at risk of being attached to almost anything promoting development. This overstretches and devalues the validity and usefulness of the concept. This paper first defines GPGs and d...

BACKGROUND Corruption in the health sector can hurt health outcomes. Improving good governance can in turn help prevent health-related corruption. We understand good governance as having the following characteristics: it is consensus-oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, equitable and inclusive, effective and efficient, follows the rule of law, is participatory and should in theory be...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were defined in 2001, making poverty the central focus of the global political agenda. In response to MDG targets for health, new funding instruments called Global Health Initiatives were set up to target specific diseases, with an emphasis on "quick win" interventions, in order to show improvements by 2015. In 2005 the UN Millennium Project defined quick...

In this podcast, we talk to Professor Vikram Patel about the impact of global mental health in the field of medicine, and discuss the initiatives and platforms being developed to promote capacity building, research, policy and advocacy within the established Centre for Global Mental Health. The anticipated challenges, controversies, and future directions for this discipline of global health are...

The Obama administration has unveiled a new 6-year, $63 billion Global Health Initiative. In addition to the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to fund HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, the plan also supports maternal and child health (MCH) initiatives that are rooted in a proposal known as the Mother and Child Campaign. The architects of the Obama adm...

In the past decade donor commitments to health have increased by 200 percent. Correspondingly, there has been a swell of new players in the global health landscape. The unprecedented, global response to a single disease, HIV/AIDS, has been responsible for a substantial portion of this boon. Numerous health success have followed this windfall of funding and attention, yet the food, fuel, and eco...

BACKGROUND Gambian infants were not routinely vaccinated against hepatitis B virus (HBV) before 1986. During 1986-90 the Gambia Hepatitis Intervention Study (GHIS) allocated 125,000 infants, by area, to vaccination or not and thereafter all infants were offered the vaccine through the nationwide immunisation programme. We report HBV serology from samples of GHIS vaccinees and unvaccinated contr...

The rise of global health issues within the world of foreign policy is precipitating great interest in the concept and practice of health diplomacy. Much discussion of this new field, particularly within the global health community, has narrowly focused on how diplomatic negotiations and foreign policy can be used to support global health goals [1,2]. Recent articles claim, for example, that ‘‘...

The panel will share global technology research initiatives in aged care. Panel objectives: 1) Describe international informatics research initiatives by experts addressing health needs of the aged, 2) Contrast health technologies used to manage aging patients, and 3) Explain challenges and opportunities to improve healthcare informatics for aging patients. Intended audience: researchers, consu...

a number of individuals and organizations have considerable influence over the selection of global health priorities and strategies. for some that influence derives from control over financial resources. for others it comes from expertise and claims to moral authority—what can be termed, respectively, epistemic and normative power. in contrast to financial power, we commonly take for granted th...