Recently global health issues have leapt to the forefront of the international agenda and are now an everyday concern around the world. The war for global health is clearly being lost on many fronts and the massive body count is mounting fast. Re-emerging diseases such as polio and tuberculosis, long thought to be on the verge of elimination, are now coupled with the devastation of newly emerging ones such as SARS and avian influenza. In addition, the shock of bioterrorism has given a tragic poignancy to the importance of studying the failure of the global health governance system. Compiled by renowned specialists, this volume studies the global challenges and responses to these issues, as well as the roles of central institutions such as the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and the G8. Health practitioners and clinicians seeking a context for their front-line care provision, as well as scholars and students of global health issues, will find the volume highly valuable.

This comprehensive and insightful Research Handbook addresses the interpretation of international solidarity within topical legal regimes and regional systems, as well as in relation to decolonization and the concepts of Ummah and Ubuntu. It examines the way in which international solidarity enables the global community to respond to intercontinental challenges, including climate change, forced migration, health emergencies, and inequality.

This work presents the broad lines of the action and evolution of the World Health Organization (WHO). It identifies some of the problems WHO has had to face in the past, and will have to confront in the future. It discusses in detail the historical origins, WHO's objectives and the evolution of its strategy and programmes. It reviews its structures as well as the problems raised by its decentralization. It examines the Organization's action in the field of technical cooperation and looks into several of WHO's more important past and present programmes. In its general conclusion, it attempts to envisage the future of the Organization. The present study is based essentially on the official documentation of the WHO, open and restricted. The strength of this book lies in the personal experience of the main author, a former WHO official, who has orientated the book's research in specific directions and has added some complementary information.

Throughout the nineteenth century, cholera was a global scourge against human populations. Practitioners had little success in mitigating the symptoms of the disease, and its causes were bitterly disputed. What experts did agree on was that the environment played a crucial role in the sites where outbreaks occurred. In this book, Michael Zeheter offers a probing case study of the environmental changes made to fight cholera in two markedly different British colonies: Madras in India and Quebec City in Canada. The colonial state in Quebec aimed to emulate British precedent and develop similar institutions that allowed authorities to prevent cholera by imposing quarantines and controlling the disease through comprehensive change to the urban environment and sanitary improvements. In Madras, however, the provincial government sought to exploit the colony for profit and was reluctant to commit its resources to measures against cholera that would alienate the city's inhabitants. It was only in 1857, after concern rose in Britain over the health of its troops in India, that a civilizing mission of sanitary improvement was begun. As Zeheter shows, complex political and economic factors came to bear on the reshaping of each colony's environment and the urgency placed on disease control.

Health Geographies: A Critical Introduction explores health and biomedical topics from a range of critical geographic perspectives. Building on the field’s past engagement with social theory it extends the focus of health geography into new areas of enquiry. Introduces key topics in health geography through clear and engaging examples and case studies drawn from around the world Incorporates multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches applied in the field of health geography Identifies both health and biomedical issues as a central area of concern for critically oriented health geographers Features material that is alert to questions of global scale and difference, and sensitive to the political and economic as well sociocultural aspects of health Provides extensive pedagogic materials within the text and guidance for further study