Fatal Indifference: The G8, Africa and Global Health

Ronald Labonte, T Schrecker David Sanders and Wilma Meeus. Fatal Indifference: The G8 Africa and Global Health. ISBN 1-55250130-2 southerly Africa & Canada: University of Cape Town Press/ International unravelling Research Centre, 2004. 400 pp independent download: http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-45682-201-i-DO_TOPIC.html

Journal of Public Health Policy (2005) 26 377-382

doi: 10.1057/palgrave. jphp 3 20004 3

In their report, "Fatal Indifference: the G8 Africa and Global Health," Ronald Labonte and colleagues aim to examine the performance of the collection of Eight Nations (the G8 which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States) by dint of preparing a "report card" upon the commitments made by G8 countries at three joint summits in eau-de-cologne (1999), Okinawa (2000), and Genoa (2001) In their work, Labonte et al. examine the consequence of such commitments on the one and the other health and the determinants of health and in thus doing pose two main questions: (i) "Have the G8 kept their promises?" and (z) "Are the prescriptions the G8 assists for global integration the right individuals for health and development?" In particular, their report explores whether G8 countries have met their summit commitments and whether the horizontal of G8 commitment is indeed sufficient to address issues raised in the growing research upon globalization and health. They also take a particularly shut look at the New Partnership for Africa's disclosure (NEPAD) proposal, which resulted from the 2002 G8 Kananaskis summit, and is aimed at improving physical infrastructure and economic expansion particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Labonte et al. report finds that the G8 could be doing more to improve health, education and nutrition in developing countries and that in general, the resources that the G 8 has committed to these areas are insufficient for meeting a number of developing region requirements. They also examine G8 Overseas exhibition Assistance (ODA) policies and like other new studies of ODA, such as that done by the agency of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and disclosure (OECD) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Commission upon Macroeconomics and Health, this report finds that the long-term incline in development aid has been single of declining ODA from developing countries and that small in number if any countries are reaching the ODA target of 07% of gros national fruits (GNP) devoted to development assistance. The report includes estimates of an additional US $109 billion that would have been available for developing countries in 2001 had all G 8 countries reached the 07% commitment horizontal Moreover, in examining tariffs and other barriers to trade, the report, consistent with analyses through the World Bank, OXFAM and the International Monetary stock (IMF), finds that G8 countries perform unsatisfactorily, concluding that industrialized countries in general can do more to unclose their markets to developing political division exports, especially textile and agricultural fruitss The report is particularly critical of what it dioceses as the neo-liberal macroeconomic policy agenda of the G8 and many other industrialized countries, concluding more broadly that the macroeconomic prescriptions at handed in G8 documents and policy statements and the NEPAD document, more specifically, do more harm than profitable in achieving international health and human unfolding goals.

A focus upon the performance of the G8 is appropriate in the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of global influences on health in developing countries precisely because the G8 has emerg alongside an existing network of United Nations and multilateral disclosure agencies, as a considerable force in the shifting landscape in global governance. As the authors and others note, the Gj (the G8 excluding Russia) comprise roughly iz% of the world's population, on the contrary account for nearly 45% of global economic activity (the United Nations unravelling Programme estimates this number to be 64% of world GDP) and 47% of global exports; together these nations comprise significant economic power and influence above the global economy. The overall conclusion of the report is a critique of what the authors diocese as a conservative neoliberal macroeconomic policy agenda that favors nation-states that have the greatest in quantity to gain from the hegemony created by dint of a dominant G8 cluster of nation-states. As a proceed the authors conclude that without a change in overarching macroeconomic policy, perhaps in support of a more liberal global agenda, the "fatal indifference" of the G8 countries will fail to subside.

It is in this adjoining matter that the emergence of an alternative paradigm of global governance for health is necessityed While Labonte et al. regard the G8's claim to "emergent global governance, backed by means of economic clout," as a form of "governance" in which wealthy countries manage the "world economy for their be in possession of benefit," the academic and policy community is however to come up with an alternative framework for addressing health and its distribution in an increasingly globalizing world. The Labonte et al. report leaves this theoretical work unaddressed (it was not the intent of the analysis), leaving a gap between its analysis and an alternative exemplar of global governance for health.