The Many Unanswered Questions of Global Health

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-02-24 09:46:00 UTC
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(photo credit: foxtongue)

There are global health questions that honestly keep me up at night. What to do about governments that don't support health is one of them. I've got a whole lot more. I'm going to try to write about them in this blog, over time, but, for now, here is my list of the difficult questions:

  1. How much maternal mortality is acceptable? Is it a specific ratio or does it relate to specific causes of death?

  2. Is eradicating polio a reasonable goal?

  3. How much global health funding should be devoted to chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiac disease?

  4. Is obesity really a global health problem?

  5. What's the right balance between individual rights and the global health good? Many countries with serious health problems also have authoritarian governments, which complicates things.

  6. Which of the current global health initiatives is going to turn out to be a massive mistake? History is littered with enough of them that it's pretty much guaranteed we are getting something wrong right now.

  7. What's going to be the next major pandemic?

  8. Can we stop worrying about avian influenza yet?

  9. Will we ever find a cure for AIDS? Or a vaccine?

  10. Can we actually change cultures to decrease the spread of HIV and STIs? Should we?

  11. How much of the difference between genders is genetic?

  12. What do we do about self-destructive behaviors like drinking and smoking?

  13. At what point do we stop considering things a public health problem? Is poor driving a public health problem? Air pollution?

  14. What's the line between promoting positive behavior change and interfering in other cultures?

  15. How far do we push in reducing the infant mortality rate? Are there babies so small or so weak we should just give up? Is cost a factor?

This is just my list. What's yours? Post in the comments and I'll put up another entry. I'll also make up one big list to use as inspiration for future blog posts.

Alanna Shaikh
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