Corporate power

It may seem that the goal of universal primary health care - in which state capacities are strengthened to ensure the rapid expansion of free publicly-provided health services - is further away than ever before. But there are many signs that the ideal of 'health for all' is making a second resurgence, writes Adam Parsons.

貧困と社会的状況は、発展途上国における病気の主な原因であることが広く認められています。この報告書は、国際経済の分かち合いを拡大することが、すべての人の医療という長年の目標を達成するための最初のステップであることを説明しています。

Poverty and social conditions are widely acknowledged to be the major causes of ill health in developing countries. This report explains how greater international economic sharing is the first step towards achieving the longstanding goal of health care for all.

Multinational Corporations are the main actors driving economic globalisation which thrives when market forces are de-regulated, allowing essential goods and services to be allocated by commercial activity, not human need. The result is a world economy that favours affluent countries and their corporate interests whilst neglecting those living in extreme poverty who the market fails to reach.

A collection of facts, organisations, reports and further resources about healthcare from a global perspective.

Since the imposition of free market policies in the 1980s, globalization has come to represent an ideological battle between those who favor economic growth and deregulation through the growing power of multinational corporations, versus those who prefer a more sustainable and democratic approach to international development, socio-economic justice, and the securing of basic human rights and needs.

Every living thing, every plant, every animal and every human being needs water to stay alive. For centuries, possibly millennia, all over the world, water was shared, for everyone’s right to this essential resource was recognised. For thousands of years legal systems have accepted that running water cannot be owned.

すべての生物、すべての植物、すべての動物、そしてすべての人間は、生存のために水を必要とします。この大切な資源に対するすべての人の権利が認められていた故、何世紀にもわたって、おそらく数千年にわたって、世界中で水が共有されていました。何千年もの間、流水は所有できないことを法律制度が受け入れてきました。

The world needs to share its common resources, not compete over them. As long as nations - and the corporations that feed them - perceive resources as something within their ownership, then economic and political resources will continue to be channelled into gaining military as opposed to environmental security, writes Louise Edwards.