Health, Trade, and Human Rights

Front Cover
Radcliffe Publishing, 2006 - Medical - 138 pages
This work contains forewords by Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus, Cape Town, South Africa and Mogobe Ramose, Chairperson and Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of South Africa. "Health, Trade and Human Rights" shows how a policy of 'free' rather than 'fair' trade increasingly undermines Third World health. It clearly illustrates how the looming environmental crisis combined with growing levels of health inequity will have adverse effects and details precisely how the 'basic human rights' enshrined in the UN Charter have gradually become subsidiary to the dictates of free trade, enforced by the World Trade Organisation. This groundbreaking new book argues the need for impartial, data-based, and transnational arbitration of equity in health and other human rights - and suggests how this might be accomplished without violence to national rights, with an emphasis on 'regional free trade'. "Health, Trade and Human Rights" provides vital, thought provoking information for general readers with an interest in the Third World and social welfare. Academics and students studying development, international studies and public health will find it invaluable, as will healthcare professionals, international healthcare organisations, care agencies, and international charities. Policy makers and shapers in communities and government will find the content revelatory as will political activists and those with an interest in equality and globalisation. '[The book] criticises the basis, the method and the extent to which the politics of wealth continues to undermine and violate the right of the poor to good health. The combination of experience with scientific rigour is presented in accessible everyday language. It is seductive; inviting the curiosity of the reader to last until the very end of the book. MacDonald's message is clear and unambiguous: war is no longer the father of all things. Instead, justice is the mother of all peace.' - Mogobe Ramose, in his Foreword. 'Astonishingly accessible, informing and inspiring. Statistically sound, penetratingly. accurate, admirably balanced. Theodore MacDonald writes with passion, as well as with sense. Much of what he has to say is drawn from his own experience working as a medical doctor and a mathematician in a broad range of the world's poorest nations. But overarching that is a powerful insight into social and economic issues, along with well-honed skills as a communicator. I am pleased to recommend this splendid book.' - Desmond M. Tutu, in his Foreword.
 

Contents

thirdworld poverty
25
our ultimate arbitrator
47
Big tidal waves and tsunamis
58
The status of breastfeeding in the third world
64
Breastfeeding versus market forces
70
Nestlés use of the HIVAIDS pandemic
78
Africas relationship with HIVAIDS
84
Why women are especially vulnerable
91
a structural adjustment policies
98
What are the solutions?
107
Political alternatives
118
The optimistic view as a solution
125
Index
131
Disempowerment of women with respect to HIVAIDS
133
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2006)

Theodore H. MacDonald, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Grace H. Chickadonz

Bibliographic information