Political Economy for Health Blog
Posts are by members of the Peoples Health Movement PEH Network. Anyone may comment but you will need to register before your first comment will be published.
This blogsite is a resource of the People’s Health Movement. Its purpose is to provide a platform for discussion of the applications of political economy to the struggle for health. (The People’s Charter for Health provides an overview of PHM’s analyses and objectives: the ‘struggle for health’).
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Gilead’s short-term win threatens the future of pharmaceutical public-private partnerships
Opinion by Christopher Morten et al in STAT News 12 Deb 2025 On Dec. 19, 2024, we joined other professors of law, medicine, and public health to file an amicus brief in support of the U.S. government in the government’s landmark patent lawsuit against leading HIV drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc. On Jan. 15, 2025, the U.S. government…
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The Lancet Commission on Transforming Primary Health Care in the Post-COVID-19 Era
William Chi-Wai Wong, Vivian Lin, Xiaoxuan Fang, Michael Kidd on behalf of the Lancet Commission on Transforming Primary Health Care in the Post-COVID-19 Era. From The Lancet 15 Feb 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)00198-9 Primary health care (PHC) was established as a global priority in the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration. Four decades later, the 2018 Astana Declaration reaffirmed the call for universal health coverage for all…
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Brics summit to tackle AI governance, global health and financial reform: Brazil
Note from bloc’s chair this year reflects plan to promote equitable global governance rather than control by ‘just big corporations’ (From Igor Patrick, SCMP, 14 Feb 2025) The next annual Brics summit will take up artificial intelligence governance, global health cooperation and financial reform, according to a “concept note” on Thursday from Brazil, the bloc’s chair this year. Brazil will…
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The colonial origins of economics
“The colonial origins of economics” by Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Surbhi Kesar and Devika Dutt, published in Third World Resurgence. THE recent Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (henceforth AJR). The Nobel committee noted that the laureates ‘have demonstrated the importance of…
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Making Sense of the Metrics
Challenges of Measuring Progress towards Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals In the latest ‘Conversation on Health Policy‘ Prof T Sundararaman and Dr Siyam Amani explore the two principal indicators of progress or otherwise towards universal health coverage (UHC). Their conversation addresses some of the technical challenges involved in the measurement of progress…
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The Pink Tide in Latin America: limitations and possibilities
The recent article by Steve Ellner on the ‘Pink Tide (‘Applying/Misapplying Gramsci’s Passive Revolution to Latin America’, Monthly Review, 76(5), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-076-05-2024-09_4) provides a useful overview and analysis of the debates among progressives regarding the limitations and possibilities of the Pink Tide phenomenon in Latin America. ‘Pink Tide’ refers to the election of progressive governments…
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Systematic delinking: a necessary condition for achieving development
In “The Structural Power of the State-Finance Nexus: Systemic Delinking for the Right to Development” (2022) Bhumika Muchhala of Third World Network sets out the case for ‘delinking’ as advocated by Samir Amin. “The current era of financial hegemony is characterized by a dense financial actor concentration, an exacerbated reliance of many South countries on…
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Global Employment Trends for Youth (ILO, 2024)
While the global labour market outlook has improved considerably for young people aged 15 to 24 more than fours years since the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic, the picture is uneven across the regions. In 2023, 65 million young people aged 15 to 24 (13%) were unemployed worldwide. In 2023, 256 million young people aged 15…
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Private equity takeovers are harming patients
By Merrill Goozner in BMJ 2023;382:p1396, Evidence review suggests that costs rise and quality falls at acquired healthcare providers Private equity investment in healthcare provider institutions reached record highs in recent years in both the US and Europe, with US acquisitions accounting for three quarters of the combined $100bn (£78bn; €91bn) in investment in 2021.12 The…
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South Centre Inputs on “Zero Draft Terms of Reference for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation
Following the release of the Bureau’s Proposal for Zero Draft Terms of Reference (ToR) for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation and the call for written comments on the Zero Draft ToR, the South Centre has provided its inputs on various structural, substantive and procedural elements of the Zero Draft ToR (20…
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