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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As Trump pauses enforcement of an anti-bribery law, will pharma engage in bad behavior?
Ed Silverman in Stat+, 12 Feb 2025 Between 2011 and 2020, 10 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies paid a combined $1.34 billion in fines to the U.S. government for bribing foreign officials in order to boost purchases of their medicines. The law that made it possible is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which has…
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Technology transfer in global health – A Post-Pandemic Reckoning for WHO Member States
Deep dive by Priti Patnaik and Nishant Sirohi in Geneva Health Files 13 Feb 2025 Obligations on technology transfer have been one of the most difficult discussions in the ongoing negotiations towards a Pandemic Agreement at the World Health Organization. The topic is charged, and has a chequered history in international development across many forums.…
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Synthesis and Conclusions: Securing technology transfer in the Pandemic Agreement
Suerie Moon’s Synthesis and Conclusions of Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre workshop on technology transfer in January 2025. Published in Medicines Law and Policy 12 Feb 2025. Technology transfer has been one of the more politically and technically difficult issues on which to forge consensus in the Pandemic Agreement negotiations. In the wake of…
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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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