Emerging Global Health Crisis of Our Times- Climate Change

The progress of the human race over the last 200 years is unprecedented in recent history. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and consumerism have made lives easier for humankind. Still, these changes come at a very high price. We never anticipated that we will have to pay the price in the form of climate change and global warming. Our planet, the earth is getting warmer by 0.85 ̊centigrde annually for the last one hundred and seventy years. Hence, glaciers are melting faster than ever, water levels are rising, and cities are sinking, while greenhouse gas emission numbers are at their highest points in human history. Unfortunately we humans are living in anthropogenic epoch and are also speeding up the destruction of the earth's ecosystem by being the dominant cause of the warming observed since the 20th century. Deforestation coupled with increased greenhouse gas emissions has led to a surge of heat-waves globally. These environmental disasters not only affect the environment, plants, and land but also have a profound direct and indirect impact on the health of people. In-fact the health impact has already debuted in the form of worsening key health indicators. In Pakistan alone, the 2015 heat-wave claimed the lives of twelve hundred people in Sindh province. Due to variable rainfall patterns that affect the availability of fresh water, it also affects food production & delivery and brings on the drought. Quality of air, clean drinking water, and availability of food are the top three indicators most influenced by these disasters. Coupled with these, the more than the frequent occurrence of natural calamities; tsunamis, wildfires, snowstorms, and extremes of temperatures has put an extra financial burden on already, stretched to limits budgets of health

Global Public Goods and Global Health

The repair rate on electron beam welded diaphragm hasn’t been at the desired level at Siemens SIT for several years. An improvement program the past five years has reduce the repair rate from 60% to 12-15% but the goal of 5% repair rate hasn’t been met. Collection of diaphragm weld and repair data started in the fall 2011 and in this thesis the material composition of the materials used for the production will be analysed from a statistical perspective. The thesis includes a comprehensive research of the nonparametric statistical methods suitable for non normally distributed, highly kurtotic and skewed data. Unfortunately a lot of statistical tests loose their power to correctly reject a false hypothesis with this kind of data. All of the elements in the material composition and the mechanical properties were analysed individually. In some of the cases it was possible to use statistical methods but in other it was not possible to conclude anything with statistics. Every case of outliers was evaluated individually. The main conclusions are that in all of the four materials there are some elements and mechanical properties outside of the material specifications. A number of cases also had outliers inside of the material specification and in most cases those were causing the variability in the data and had higher repair rates than the overall repair rate. Some trends were found, for example the weld quality was better for lower yield strength in all materials and higher chromium content in material A produced better quality. The first steps to improvement for Siemens are to find out why materials outside of the material specifications are getting all the way to the production without anyone noticing. A simple material process control chart could visually notify if a material is outside of the specification limits or even just outside of the usual. Knowing exactly how the material is before starting the production will give time and space for preventive measures if they are necessary and could improve lead times and decrease costs.För några år har Siemens hatt kvalitetsproblem med Electron Beam svetsing av mellanväggar. Förbättringsprojekt har reducerat reparationer intensivt men fortfarande finns det problemer med svetsningen. Inga mellanväggar lämnar produktionen utan att ha bra kvalitet så att förbättringarna ska fokusera på att reducera produktionskostnader och ledtider. Hösten 2011 började Siemens att samla reparation data för mellanväggarna och i det examens arbetet blir materialsamansättningen analyserad med statistiska metoder. Arbetet innehåller övergripande analysis på non-parametriska statistiska metoder och hur dom funkerar på skevat data med hög kurtosis. Tyvärr finns det inte många metoder som har hög chans att förkasta falska hypoteser när man jobbar med sånt data. Alla elementer och mekaniska egenskaper av materialet blev analyserade, men tyvärr inte alltid med statistiska metoder. Alla extremvärden blev analyserade individuellt. I alla fyra materialer finns det elementer och mekaniska egenskaper utan förmaterialets specifikationer. I vissa fall finns det outliers inom materialets specifikationer men som har högre reparation procent än det vanliga och orsakar variationen i datat. Vissa tendenser kunne hittas, till exempel att det går bättre att svetsa materialer med lägre sträckgräns och högre kromhalt går bättre för material A. Simpelt processstyrningdiagram skulle kunna visa om material är utanför material specifikationen men också om materialet är utanför det ”vanliga”. Att veta exact hur materialet är innan produktion kan sjunka ledtider och produktionskostnader

Global Health Law Governance

The field of public health law traditionally focuses on law at the national and sub-national level. National legal systems, however, are inadequate to deal with major threats to humans. Despite the inadequacies of national governance, there are fundamental questions that need resolution in the field of global health law: Why should governments care about the health of people far away? Are profound health disparities just and, if not, is there a corresponding obligation to redress the injustice? Can international law effectively bind governments, foundations, and corporations to act for the global good? This article, based on a lecture at Emory Law School, asks the hard questions and offers some ways forward for the future of global health

The President’s Global Health Initiative

The U.S. Global Health Initiative (GHI) represents the Obama administration’s new strategy for international development assistance in health. With a pledge of $63 billion over six years, GHI aims to fund PEPFAR and a set of broader global health issues (e.g., maternal and child health, nutrition, and neglected tropical diseases). GHI is also being framed as “smart power” whereby health would serve as a critical tool for U.S. foreign policy. However, as the U.S. enters a period of severe budgetary restraint and as domestic crises rise to the fore, the promise of global health reform could become illusory. The lack of coordination and coherence in the U.S. global health architecture, as well as the broader U.S. foreign assistance system, require fundamental changes in the U.S. approach to global health going forward. This article analyzes current weaknesses in the GHI strategy and makes four key suggestions for the transformation of the U.S. global health enterprise under GHI. These suggestions include: (1) the devotion of resources that are predictable, sustainable, and scalable to needs; (2) the development of a true “whole of government” approach; (3) greater collaboration with international partners for success; and (4) the encouragement of host country ownership

Developing Successful Global Health Alliances

Examines the circumstances that call for alliance formation to reduce the burdens of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, river blindness, and many other diseases; the utility of various alliance models; and the characteristics of successful alliances

Human Rights in Global Health Governance

Human rights frame global health governance. In codifying a normative foundation for global governance in the aftermath of World War II, states came together under the auspices of an emergent United Nations (UN) to develop human rights under international law. Human rights law, establishing international norms to advance global justice, has thereby become a universally accepted framework for global health, and the past seventy years have witnessed an evolution of international human rights law to define the highest attainable standard of health. Conceptualizing health disparities as rights violations, these health-related human rights offer universal standards to frame government responsibilities for the progressive realization of health and facilitate legal accountability for health policy. Where globalizing forces have created an imperative for global governance institutions to meet an expanding set of global health challenges, human rights have come to guide institutions of global health governance.As rights-based approaches have become fundamental to global health governance, the proliferation of global governance institutions has warranted a wider sharing of human rights responsibilities for health beyond the UN human rights system. Institutions of global governance are not only seen as instrumental to the development of international human rights law but also as essential to assuring the implementation of rights-based obligations in a rapidly globalizing world. Over the past twenty-five years, the UN has sought to formalize these human rights implementation responsibilities across the entire global governance system. Translating international law into organizational action, global governance institutions seek to “mainstream” human rights across their policies, programs, and practices. To understand the ways in which human rights are realized in global health, this Special Issue of Global Health Governance examines the role of global health governance institutions in structuring the implementation of human rights for public health

U.S. Global Health Policy: Survey of Americans on the U.S. Role in Global Health

Examines Americans' knowledge about and attitudes toward the United States' role in improving the health of people in developing nations, including funding amounts, areas, and criteria. Analyzes data by age, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation

Global Answers to Global Problems: Health as a Global Public Good. 1/2007

Address by Jorge Sampaio, UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis and former President of Portugal, on the occasion of the 8th Hendrik Brugmans Memorial Lecture to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Hendrik Brugmans, sponsored by the College of Europe, the Madariaga Foundation and the Alumni Association of the College of Europe, Brussels City Hall, 14 December 2006

The disease of corruption: views on how to fight corruption to advance 21st century global health goals

Corruption has been described as a disease. When corruption infiltrates global health, it can be particularly devastating, threatening hard gained improvements in human and economic development, international security, and population health. Yet, the multifaceted and complex nature of global health corruption makes it extremely difficult to tackle, despite its enormous costs, which have been estimated in the billions of dollars. In this forum article, we asked anti-corruption experts to identify key priority areas that urgently need global attention in order to advance the fight against global health corruption. The views shared by this multidisciplinary group of contributors reveal several fundamental challenges and allow us to explore potential solutions to address the unique risks posed by health-related corruption. Collectively, these perspectives also provide a roadmap that can be used in support of global health anti-corruption efforts in the post-2015 development agenda