2011 Articles

The Future of Global Health: Building Local Capacity

JGH Editorial Board, The; Thorpe, Lorna; Paxton, Anne; Clarke, James

In the last two decades, the field of global health has experienced a flood of interest and attention. During this time, international organizations, individual countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have poured more money and resources than ever into disease eradication initiatives and largescale public health interventions in the developing world. In her 2007 essay entitled “The Challenge of Global Health,” Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett calls this era of aidgiving the “age of generosity.” She contends that “for the first time in history, the world is poised to spend enormous resources to conquer the diseases of the poor” (Garrett, 2007). Garrett’s claim does not go unwarranted: consider that international developmental assistance in public health rose from US$5.6 billion in 1990 to $21.8 billion in 2007, the year Garrett published her essay (The Lancet, 2009). It is worth noting that only two years later, the U.S. pledged to increase its funding for global health development assistance from $460 million to $8.6 billion (“The Future of Global Health Policy,” 2009).