The Role of Neurosurgery in Global Health Epilepsy, Movement Disorders, and Psychiatric Diseases

2022 ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Ulrick Sidney Kanmounye ◽  
Lilyana Angelov ◽  
Susan C. Pannullo ◽  
Setthasorn Zhi Yang Ooi ◽  
Rosaline de Koning ◽  
...  

This book critically assesses the expanding field of global health. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise through vivid case studies and bold conceptual work. The book demonstrates the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health, arguing for a more comprehensive, people-centered approach. Topics include the limits of technological quick fixes in disease control, the moral economy of global health science, the unexpected effects of massive treatment rollouts in resource-poor contexts, and how right-to-health activism coalesces with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care. The chapters explore the altered landscapes left behind after programs scale up, break down, or move on. We learn that disease is really never just one thing, technology delivery does not equate with care, and biology and technology interact in ways we cannot always predict. The most effective solutions may well be found in people themselves, who consistently exceed the projections of experts and the medical-scientific, political, and humanitarian frameworks in which they are cast. This book sets a new research agenda in global health and social theory and challenges us to rethink the relationships between care, rights, health, and economic futures.


Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin ◽  
Benjamin Mason Meier

This chapter introduces the foundational importance of human rights for global health, providing a theoretical basis for the edited volume by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a normative basis for public health. By addressing public health harms as human rights violations, international law has offered global standards by which to frame government responsibilities and evaluate health practices, providing legal accountability in global health policy. The authors trace the historical foundations for understanding the development of human rights and the role of human rights in protecting and promoting health since the end of World War II and the birth of the United Nations. Examining the development of human rights under international law, the authors introduce the right to health as an encompassing right to health care and underlying determinants of health, exploring this right alongside other “health-related human rights.”


Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.


2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 552-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Steeb ◽  
Pamela U. Joyner ◽  
Dhiren R. Thakker
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Lynette Reid

Abstract Within-country social inequalities in health have widened while global health inequalities have (with some exceptions) narrowed since the Second World War. On commonly accepted prioritarian and sufficientist views of justice and health, these two trends together would be acceptable: the wealthiest of the wealthy are pulling ahead, but the worst off are catching up and more are achieving sufficiency. Such commitments to priority or sufficiency are compatible with a common “development” narrative about economic and social changes that accompany changes (“transitions”) in population health. I set out a very simple version of health egalitarianism (without commitment to any particular current theory of justice) and focus on two common objections to egalitarianism. Priority and sufficiency both address the levelling down and formalism objections, but these objections are distinct: giving content to equality (I argue here) places in question the claimed normative superiority of priority and sufficiency. Using examples of the role of antimicrobials in both these trends – and the future role of AMR – I clarify (first) the multiple forms and dimensions of justice at play in health, and (second) the different mechanisms at work in generating the two current patterns (seen in life course narratives and narratives of political economy). The “accelerated transition” that narrowed global health inequalities is fed by anti-microbials (among other technology transfers). It did not accelerate but replaced the causal processes by which current HICs achieved the transition (growing and shared economic prosperity and widening political franchise). The impact of AMR on widening social inequalities in health in HICs will be complex: inequality has been fed in part by tertiary care enabled by antimicrobials; AMR might erode the solidarity underlying universal health systems as the well-off seek to maintain current expectations of curative and rehabilitative surgery and chemotherapy while AMR mounts. In light of both speculations about the impact of AMR on social and global health inequalities, I close with practical and with theoretical reflection. I briefly indicate the practical importance of understanding AMR from the perspective of health justice for policy response. Then, from a broader perspective, I argue that the content by which I meet the formalism objection demonstrates that the two trends (broadening within-country inequality and narrowing global inequality) are selective and biased samples of a centuries-long pattern of widening social inequalities in health. We are not in the midst of a process of “catching up”. In light of the long-term pattern described here, is the pursuit of sufficiency or priority morally superior to the pursuit of equality as a response to concrete suffering – or do they rationalize a process more objectively described as the best-off continuing to take the largest share of one of the most important benefits of economic development?


2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 365-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Budimka Novakovic ◽  
Maja Milanovic ◽  
Milica Atanackovic-Krstonosic ◽  
Branislava Srdjenovic-Conic ◽  
Neda Gavaric ◽  
...  

The roles of the pharmacist were transformed throughout the history and modern pharmacist as we know now beside providing products and playing in optimization of medicines has a crucial role in ensuring the efficacy and safety of applied drugs. A better life quality, global health and safety is the major goal of the 21st century and to achieve that great span of roles pharmacy profession involves now. The paper highlighted new roles of the pharmacist today in order to better understand the transition of the pharmacy profession.


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