The Global Health System: Actors, norms and expectations in transition
Author(s)/Editor(s): Szleza NA, Bloom2 BR, Jamison DT and al.
Publisher/Organizer: PLoS Medicine
Publication date: January 2010 | Volume 7 | Issue 1
Number of pages:
Language: English
Overview
The global health system that evolved through the latter half of the 20th century achieved extraordinary success in controlling infectious diseases and reducing child mortality. Life expectancy in low- and middle-income countries increased at a rate of about 5 years every decade for the past 40 years [1]. Today, however, that system is in a state of profound transition.
The need has rarely been greater to rethink how we endeavor to meet global health needs. We present here a series of four papers on one dimension of the global health transition: its changing institutional arrangements. We define institutional arrangements broadly to include both the actors (individuals and/or organizations) that exert influence in global health and the norms and expectations that govern the relationships among them see Box 1 for definitions of the terms used in this article.
The traditional actors on the global health stage—most notably national health ministries and the World Health Organization (WHO)—are now being joined (and sometimes challenged) by an ever-greater variety of civil society and nongovernmental organizations, private firms, and private philanthropists.”