Synergies and tensions between universal health coverage and global health security: why we need a second ‘Maximizing Positive Synergies’ initiative

Ooms, Gorik; Beiersmann, Claudia; Flores, Walter; Hanefeld, Johanna; Müller, Olaf; Mulumba, Moses; Ottersen, Trygve; Sarker, Malabika; Jahn, Albrecht

doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2016-000217

Cited by 21 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…There is, therefore, a need for harmonisation of these different initiatives, such as UHC and GHSA, so that they will be synergistic to each other towards the overall attainment of the health SDGs. There is thus a need for joint planning, investment, implementation and monitoring and evaluation among the different initiatives and actors 42. This is possible provided that there is political commitment, stakeholder engagement and international solidarity 43…”

Section: How Did Ethiopia Achieve the Health Mdgs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is thus a need for joint planning, investment, implementation and monitoring and evaluation among the different initiatives and actors. 42 This is possible provided that there is political commitment, stakeholder engagement and international solidarity. 43 Last, but not least, addressing the inequity gap requires a robust data system which generates granular data for geographic areas, population groups and socioeconomic status.…”

Section: Key Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Successes and challenges of the millennium development goals in Ethiopia: lessons for the sustainable development goals

et al. 2017

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We analysed the performance of Ethiopia in achieving the health-related millennium development goals (MDGs) with the aim of acquiring lessons for the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Ethiopia achieved most of the health MDGs: a 67% reduction in under-five mortality, a 71% decline in maternal mortality ratio, a 90% decline in new HIV infections, a decrease in malaria-related deaths by 73% and a more than 50% decline in mortality due to tuberculosis. We argue that these achievements are due to implementation of a mix of comprehensive strategies within the health system and across other sectors of the government. Scaling up of interventions by disease control programmes (including the health extension programme) and strengthening of the health system have played important roles towards the achievements. These health gains could not have been realised without progress in the other MDGs: poverty reduction, education, access to safe drinking-water and peace and stability of the country. However, the gains were not equitable, with differences between urban and rural areas, among regions and socioeconomic strata. Ethiopia's remarkable success in meeting most of the targets of the health-related MDGs could be explained by its comprehensive and multisectoral approach for health development. The inequity gap remains a challenge that achieving the health-related SDGs requires the country to implement strategies, which specifically target more marginal populations and geographic areas. This also needs peace and stability, without which it is almost impossible to improve health.

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Section: How Did Ethiopia Achieve the Health Mdgs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Key Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successes and challenges of the millennium development goals in Ethiopia: lessons for the sustainable development goals

et al. 2017

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“…One of the key innovations of the SDGs is the incorporation of universal health coverage. [58] While there are divergent conceptualizations over what progress toward universal health coverage means, [59] it will require establishing or strengthening national arrangements for social protection so that it includes coverage of the poor and the vulnerable (Target 1.3). Target 2.1 is about ending hunger and ensuring access to sufficient food with a view to combat undernourishment, which is reiterated by Target 2.2, which emphasizes the nutritional needs of children and adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, and older persons.…”

Section: Empirical Assessment Of the Links Among The Sdgsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing the Interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals: Approaches to Attain Policy Integration

2017

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2015 form a universal and integrated policy agenda to be realized over the next 15 years. One of the targets is the attainment of policy coherence for sustainable development, which requires the individual goals to become interlinked. This article's main research interest lies in assessing how national governments and their competent ministries interpret and strive to implement the target of policy coherence for sustainable development. Drawing on the Voluntary National Reviews submitted in 2016 and 2017 by six countries, this study shows that at the national level, the links among the different goals and the idea of policy integration are subject to divergent interpretations. The differences observed do not stem from the interlinkages of the SDGs as defined by the United Nations, neither do they result from different levels of income or degree of political centralization. Instead, the respective domestic policy‐making processes are likely to explain the implementation strategies adopted by the individual states. For example, the implementation approach adopted by the government of Turkey suggests that path‐dependency is critical, whereas the Colombian approach consists of defining new policy measures and institutional arrangements.

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“…Despite the welcome and inevitable focus on infectious disease affecting low income regions of the worldespecially sub-Saharan Africa and HIV/AIDS - (Elbe, 2006;McInnes & Rushton, 2013)there has been almost no commensurate investment and resources regarding health systems capacities to deal with any pandemic threats, or even routine outbreaks of infectious disease. Thus for many, the emphasis of Western GHSA has been on surveillance and containment in resource poor countries, rather than in building badly needed capacities to deal with very real threats (Fauci, 2014;Heymann et al, 2015;Kalra et al, 2014;Ooms et al, 2017). In contrast, the US and other Western states have devoted substantial resources toward protecting their own citizens and borders from pandemic threats, via global disease surveillance, stockpiles of medical countermeasures, and investments in medical and virological research (Bell & Figert, 2012;Elbe, 2011;Elbe et al, 2014).…”

Section: A Narrow Agendamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The consequent holes left in international public health and national health systems are routinely exposed. The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2014/2015 illustrated how countries with poor health system and little or no capacities in terms of reference laboratories, isolation and sterilization and so on, were largely incapable of conducting a public health response to an infectious disease outbreak, thereby threatening international public health (Ooms et al, 2017;WHO Ebola Response Team, 2016). It was some 3 months after the initial outbreak that the virus was identified as Ebola (and not cholera, as initially suspected) and the international response was slow to factor in that the health systems of these countries needed to be supplanted by an emergency intervention (Kalra et al, 2014).…”

Section: A Narrow Agendamentioning

confidence: 99%

The somatic-security industrial complex: theorizing the political economy of informationalized biology

Hester

Williams

2019

Review of International Political Economy

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In this article, we seek to intervene on the global health security debate and attendant literatures to argue that the primary focus of global health securitythat infectious disease is an existential security threat to both humans and vital infrastructuresonly tells one part of the story about the meaning and significance of biological danger in the contemporary context. While important, this perspective fails to grapple with the ways that our conception of what biology is and what it can do have been altered through advances in science and technology, particularly through the intermingling of computer science and molecular biology. Starting from the premise that biology has been informationalized, we argue that biological exchange is not only a threat to humans and the institutional structures they create, it is also, importantly, a political and economic opportunity for firms and core states involved in global health security, and one of the key bases for an emergent global political economy of health security. We forward the idea of a somatic-security industrial complex to capture this dynamic.

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Synergies and tensions between universal health coverage and global health security: why we need a second ‘Maximizing Positive Synergies’ initiative

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

Successes and challenges of the millennium development goals in Ethiopia: lessons for the sustainable development goals

Successes and challenges of the millennium development goals in Ethiopia: lessons for the sustainable development goals

Governing the Interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals: Approaches to Attain Policy Integration

The somatic-security industrial complex: theorizing the political economy of informationalized biology

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