The need for a European Strategy on Global Health

Abstract

International health has as a rule been considered as the involvement of countries in the work of international organizations such as the World Health Organization, usually through small departments of ‘‘international health’’ in the Ministries of Health and as development aid and humanitarian assistance, more often than not handled by bilateral aid agencies linked (in most cases) to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs or to Ministries of Development. But even in these long-established areas of action there has not been enough cooperation between European countries to speak with one voice, support similar priorities, harmonize aid and cooperate at recipient country level. This division has also held back joint European action on global health. Global health refers to those health issues that transcend national boundaries and governments and call for actions on the global forces that determine the health of people [1]. It requires new forms of governance at national and international level that seek to include a wide range of actors. As in international health, in many countries as well as in the European Commission three strands of global health action generally run in parallel with little coordination or even in competition: