Global Health Governance
[Accessed 6 December 2014]
http://blogs.shu.edu/ghg/category/complete-issues/summer-2013/

Determinants of Global Collective Action in Health: The Case of the UN Summit on Non-communicable Diseases
November 30, 2014
Chantal Blouin, Laurette Dube, Ebony Bertorelli and Monique Moreau
This article presents a case study of the policy process leading to the UN High-Level Meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The case study tests an analytical framework to understand the factors influencing successful global collective to address chronic diseases. Using this framework, we highlighted four factors explaining the weak outcome of this process. We observed a relatively weak mobilization and advocacy of civil society at the national and global level. Second, the financial context of that time, especially in industrial countries, has created the conditions where it is politically and fiscally difficult for donor countries to undertake financial commitments to support global actions. Thirdly, we observe that health actors have done an incorrect assessment as to where the policy process. Finally, we observed a certain lack of clarity on the rationale for global collective action; the key obstacle here is the economic case has not been sufficiently and visibly made to motivate and trigger policy change. After the Summit in the fall of 2011, the global health diplomacy around chronic diseases control and prevention continued. Future research should examine if the proposed analytical framework is a useful tool to analyze these further steps and to prepare for health diplomacy.

Plants, Patents and Biopiracy: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights and Traditional Medicine
– November 30, 2014
Suchita Shah
A controversial international debate has arisen between those who call for stronger intellectual property legislation to protect their scientific innovation, and those who claim ‘biopiracy’ of their traditional medical knowledge (TMK) under such legislation. This paper firstly presents and contextualises the debate, then argues that the difficulty in its resolution has been fuelled by three main factors: first, the lack of an integrated and comprehensive international rights-based system for TMK, which is mirrored in domestic legislation; second, attempts to redress perceived iniquities present legal, political and logistical problems to developing countries; third, when faced with these constraints, developing countries themselves may not act in the best interests of their TMK holders. The case of India, based on original fieldwork, illustrates these issues. Due to the complex nature of TMK and diverse positions on its protection, a broad international sui generis system of rights for TMK holders seems a distant prospect in reality. With a view to advancing the debate, this paper highlights local, national, regional and global initiatives to protect TMK holders, examining in particular the potential of four key processes – forum-shifting, linkages to public health, use of transnational networks and normative change in order to achieve incremental gains.