Global Health & Global Health Ethics

Today, I delved rather deeply into the world of academia to attend a textbook launch and prelude to a full day symposium on Global Health and Global Health Ethics, presented by University of Toronto (Global Health Office of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in collaboration with the Joint Centre for Bioethics).

The co-editor of the book, Solomon Benatar, presented three of the book's authors:

Anne-Emanuelle Birn

Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Stephen Gill & Isabella Bakker

Department of Political Science, York University

Each discussed the chapters they were involved in very briefly and some of the talk went right over my head, but I felt there was a strong theme of social justice. I found it interesting that the authors wanted to sway from global ethics based predominantly on market and business ethics, to more broad political economies and geopolitics. 

Health, nowadays, has become so swamped in individual matters of health behaviours and relationships of power between doctor-patient or doctor-nurse that we seemed to have lost perspective and lack direction in global health ethics. Instead, for example, they suggested a focus on the asymmetry of power of economies and the global elite.

They were also quick to point out that one needn't feel all too pessimistic about the matter, as we have the intellect and resources to handle the issues at stake, but the question remains, how to translate to practice? As good academics, they were happy to turn toward education, changing mindsets, as a means toward global change. An ambitious goal, but an honourable one, I suppose.

A very theoretical talk, mostly due to shortage of time, but I'm interested in looking more deeply into the textbook.