Engaging Today's Global Citizens

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Fighting Health Challenges Around the World

Eradicating Disease Through Cooperation and Collaboration

Global health issues can be overcome. The first step in combating global diseases is knowing the facts. Only then can we begin to know how to fight.

The facts: The world is faced with health challenges every day. HIV/AIDS continues to spread through Africa and Asia at an alarming rate. Tuberculosis and malaria are still prevalent in the developing world. Last year's tsunami in South Asia and this year's Hurricane Katrina in the southern United States encouraged the spread of diseases—such as e.coli—among those who were already struggling. And perhaps the most public these days, avian flu, which has reached numerous countries, demonstrates that diseases are not only the concern of the far-off developing world but can affect anyone, anywhere, at any time.

These health challenges are not unconquerable. In fact, the world has been well-equipped for decades to address health challenges. Smallpox was eradicated in 1977 and many more diseases are close to extinction. In fact, a growing number of organizations are joining together to fight diseases and conditions that can be controlled and eradicated. These organizations reach across borders, cooperating with governments regardless of international relations or relationships. They share a belief that, above all, public health should not fall victim to foreign policy.

Outside of Politics, International Cooperation

The World Health Organization (WHO), one of the United Nations' most successful bodies, reaches millions of people each year. Governed by 192 member states, WHO has made great strides in surpassing politics for the good of people in need. Many of its successes, however, fall to the wayside—if they are recognized at all.

Most recently, WHO was acknowledged as a founding partner—along with the American Red Cross, the UN Foundation, UNICEF, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—of the Measles Initiative. Working with African governments, the Measles Initiative has provided vaccinations to African children since 1999, leading to a 60 percent decrease in measles cases and deaths since then. The organization has also, along with UNICEF, taken a lead role in coordinating relief funds for victims of the October earthquake in Pakistan in order to prevent the spread of disease through communities that lack health care facilities and specialists.

Issues such as these have routinely been of little concern to anyone but those who work with patients and disease on a daily basis. In recent months, however, health issues have gained greater attention. And WHO is a more crucial organization than ever.

WHO's work and successes demonstrate that the organization is not bogged down in traditional bureaucracy. While it struggles, like any other large organization, to reconcile budget numbers with efficient programs and align the needs and wants of states with pragmatic and effective methods, those who run the organization and those who work on the ground keep the main goal of the organization in mind: "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health."

Private Funds for Public Good

WHO is only one of many groups working to both combat health challenges and make them more evident to the general public. To different degrees, Doctors Without Borders, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Partners in Health are among some of the organizations working on public health in countries around the world.

Doctors Without Borders has recruited medical and nonmedical specialists from around the world for relief work in more than 70 countries, most recently responding to the earthquake in Pakistan and the hurricane in Guatemala. The Kaiser Family Foundation—initially a foundation focused on health issues facing Americans—has expanded its work, developing GlobalHealthReporting.org, a site focused on educating the public and the media about global epidemics. And Partners in Health, a nonprofit based in Massachusetts, has expanded its work beyond its initial project in rural Haiti to include efforts in Russia, Latin America, and the United States.

These groups do not work alone. Like the Clinton Foundation—which has joined with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the World Bank; UNICEF; and the United Nations Development Programme to combat HIV/AIDS and general health concerns—these organizations are forming partnerships and initiating collaborations among themselves and with international organizations in order to make greater strides in global health development.

Mounting Public Attention

Global health is becoming a topic of coffeehouse conversation, inspired by media coverage and informed by the work of large organizations and public and private foundations and initiatives.

Only two weeks ago, in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Merck, PBS debuted a six-hour miniseries entitled Rx for Survival, a program that addressed a spectrum of global health concerns—historic and contemporary—and how they were eradicated, or may be in the future. TIME magazine, in connection with its November 7 issue, Webcast large sections of its TIME Global Health Summit, featuring such prominent personalities as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Richard Branson.

The TIME Global Health Summit brought media attention to a few well-known personalities, but also to the causes they work for. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was featured in a recent New Yorker article on global heath funding. And on November 6, its founder, Bill Gates, was interviewed on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, where the shows host asked, "After you built up Microsoft, made your fortune...how did you decide to start giving it away and how did you choose global health?"

No One Hero, No One Solution

Health is often a low priority for policymakers. It often takes a backseat to more controversial or sexier topics that assume center stage and stay there for weeks or months on end. Slowly, however, more and more people are becoming educated about global health concerns and want to know more. Education is the first step. Action is the next.

To paraphrase Gates, personalities, foundations, and public projects can raise the profile and afford to take risks. But organizations like WHO and national governments are just as important to the cause. Bringing all of these players to the table will be the most effective way to realize global health successes.

—Jen Maceyko