PHA-Exch> Press release: author issues urgent call to action on global health

[Claudio Schuftan]

*PRESS RELEASE**: author issues urgent call to action on global health*



Théodore MacDonald's latest book *Removing the Barriers to Global Health
Equity* is released this week by Radcliffe Publishing.



The book presents an urgent call to bolster international organisations and
cooperation in healthcare - with searing findings on the failures of
neoliberal policies - that is particularly timely in light of the current
global financial crisis.



The author's shocking findings demonstrate how profitable it has become for
corporate interests to undermine the UN Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, this week celebrating its 60th anniversary. Making the UN and its
health agencies work effectively can no longer be dismissed as an academic
issue, argues MacDonald, but is crucial to the health and welfare of every
human being, irrespective of nationality, wealth or status, in an
interconnected and interdependent world.



*Removing the Barriers to Global Health Equity* indicates steps which can be
taken to avert disaster. These will involve a much higher level of
international cooperation than the world has known before, but have also
taken on an even greater urgency.



The book draws not only on MacDonald's experience as a medical practitioner
in some of the world's poorest counties, but also on meticulously critical
analysis of the written record and sharply probing interviews with key
figures in UN agencies. It completes a mammoth project presenting a thoroughly
researched and often damning exposé of serious but remediable defects in the
structure and administration of the UN across six books, beginning with *Third
World** Health: hostage to **First World** wealth *(Radcliffe Publishing,
2005).



The book will be officially launched at King's College Medical School,
London on 21 January. Further details will be announced nearer the launch.



*Théodore H MacDonald* is Professor Emeritus and Member of the Research
Institute for Human Rights and Social Justice at London Metropolitan
University. He is a consultant for the World Health Organization,
International Development Agency and various non-governmental organizations
in developing countries. He was formerly Director of Postgraduate Studies in
Health at Brunel University.
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