[EQ] Global public action in health and pharmaceutical policies: politics and policy priorities

Global public action in health and pharmaceutical policies: politics and policy priorities

 

IKD - Innovation, Knowledge and Development- Working Paper No. 45- February 2009

The Open University

Meri Koivusalo1 and Maureen Mackintosh2

1 Meri Koivusalo,National Inst. For Health and Welfare, Finland

2 Maureen Mackintosh, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes

 

Available online as PDF [48p.] at: http://www.open.ac.uk/ikd/documents/working-papers/ikd-working-paper-45.pdf

 

“…….This paper analyses and discusses global public action in the context of global health policies. It discusses how public action on pharmaceuticals has influenced on the one hand global health, and on the other the institutional basis of global health governance. It argues that while nongovernmental public action has been effective in terms of influencing agenda-setting in global policies, its role in influencing solutions to the problems has been more limited. In contrast to trade policies, more substantial changes have taken place within global health policies and global health governance.

 

Furthermore, some of the directions supported by global public action may not be conducive to the democratic accountability of global health governance, the wise use of public resources, health systems development, and longer term access to health care within developing countries.

 

The scope for nongovernmental public action is further challenged by the changing context and commercialisation of global public action itself, whereby calls for access to medicines can also be seen as a means of demand creation for new and more expensive medicines in developed countries too, with further articulation of requests for more public funds in support of innovation and clinical trials to tackle the issue of lack of research and development (R&D)…..”

 

 

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