Meeting the Basic Survival Needs of the World's Least Healthy People: Toward a Framework Convention on Global Health

The international health landscape is increasingly crowded and complex. Global health efforts overlap, results are fragmented, and activities do not align with country priorities and capacities. Moreover, global health funding and interventions are skewed toward emotional, high-visibility events (e.g. the Asian tsunami), diseases that capture the public's imagination (e.g HIV/AIDS), and diseases with the potential for rapid global transmission (e.g. SARS and pandemic influenza). Instead, what is truly needed is to meet basic survival needs for the world's most disadvantaged people and to focus on creating and sustaining effective health systems. In this lecture, Professor Gostin will make an innovative proposal for a Framework Convention on Global Health currently under discussion at the WHO and World Bank.