PHA-Exchange> Gates's grandest challenge: transcending technology as public health ideology

[Claudio]

From: Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC) 
 
Gates's grandest challenge: transcending technology as public health ideology  

 

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Department of Public Health, Sciences, Faculty of Medicine,

University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
www.thelancet.com Published online March 11, 2005

            

 

Available free online as PDF file at: http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art6429web.pdf 

 

            Editorial: http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.365.9463.analysis_and_interpretation.32529.1&x=x.pdf 

 

"..Who, one might reasonably ask, could oppose the goals of the Grand Challenges? After all, any concerted effort to address the health problems of the developing world must surely be welcome. But the longer we isolate public health's technical aspects from its political and social aspects, the longer technical interventions will squeeze out one side of the mortality balloon only to find it inflated elsewhere. Rudolf Virchow-founding father of both cellular pathology and social medicine-perhaps stated this most succinctly and most presciently in one of his lesser known quotes: "The improvement of medicine may eventually prolong human life, but the improvement of social conditions can achieve this result more rapidly and more successfully."51 Integration of the two strategies is the grandest challenge of them all.."

 

 

[Can anybody review this for thelist? Claudio]

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