Sickness and Wealth
Meredith Fort, Mary Anne Mercer, and Oscar GishProduced by South End Press, Published by Hesperian
$23.95
In this powerful and accessible collection of essays, international scholars and activists examine how official and corporate actors of globalization -
including multinationals, the IMF and World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and "first world" governments - have enacted policies that limit medical access
and promote disease and death for many in the poor world.
“ “By globalizing the struggle, we can all construct a different world on terms that guarantee health, well-being, and dignity.”
— Sickness and WealthThe contributors to Sickness and Wealth provide a history of health and development strategies, reveal the grim health consequences of these policies throughout the world, and highlight the work of activists and organizations currently confronting globalization and working toward improved global health.
Edited by affiliates of Health Alliance International, Sickness and Wealth offers clear explanations on this pressing topic, as well as useful illustrations and powerful photography.
Authors include Vandana Shiva on the effects of industrial agriculture on poor people's health; Patrick Bond on the political roots of South Africa's cholera epidemic; Evelyne Hong on the role of international agencies and corporations in health care; Seiji Yamada on how militarism and war produce disease; and several writers describing how the struggle for people's health is, itself, becoming globalized.
Praise for Sickness and Wealth
“…the broad scope of the book, its historical grounding, and its short, extremely accessible chapters make it a unique resource for anyone wanting an overview of current debates and evidence about the impact of macro-level, political, and economic forces on global public health.”— Klaudia Dmitrienko, Journal of Public Health Policy
“This work is an important and very readable contribution to the field of global health.”
— Peter J. Hotez Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine, George Washington University, Washington, DC
“The reading classes are learning what the world’s bottom billion have long been forced to know: that global economic and social arrangements are increasingly inegalitarian and are bad for our health. Militarization, privatization, and unfair trade policies are in fact tightly linked to diseases such as malaria, cholera, and AIDS. Sickness and Wealth exposes the mechanisms of these connections.”
— Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Founding Director, Partners in Health, Boston MA, USA
“A timely, radical, and accessible tool for understanding the corporate attack on health care as a right. An exceptional mix of activist and scholarly voices makes Sickness and Wealth stand apart. This book is indispensable to those interested in health and social justice.”
— Sarah Shannon, Executive Director, Hesperian Health Guides, Berkeley, CA, USA
