Solutions to global health threats are hampered by a lack of affordable access to medicine in developing countries, speakers argued at the Munk Centre last Wednesday, Oct. 14. To cap off the conference “Global health and global justice: Challenging the global marketplace,” a panel sat down to talk about global health policy, featuring the University of Ottawa’s Ronald Labonté and Ted Schrecker and U of T’s Prabhat Jha. The event attracted a good cross-section of attendees, from first-year students to professionals in the field.
An animated speaker, Labonté tackled the issue of whether global health diplomacy was a real transformation on the part of states or simply realpolitik, politics based on practicality rather than morality. Of the three elements of diplomacy—national, economic, and human—the human element is often lost, he argued. According to Labonté, governments are not doing enough to create cohesion in their foreign policy to deal with issues of global health.
Schrecker supported Labonté’s argument by challenging the capability of market fundamentalism to reduce health inequity. He also emphasized the danger of allowing the privatization of basic necessities. “It’s ‘pay to play or get out of the way,’” Shrecker said. He added that human interests must trump economic ones, and that it’s the government’s responsibility to prevent “marketizing” the needs of the public.
Although Jha agreed with Labonté and Schrecker, he argued that economic interests were also needed to advance equity in public health. Jha called economic growth a necessity for using tax dollars to fund programs and provide medicine and vaccines to those less fortunate.
