The global sharing of financial and social advances is, together with scientific gains, including new knowledge about the social factors that lead to bad health, probably one of the cornerstones in the solution to global health problems. However, health issues are often neglected in globalisation discussions, which is also evident in the government's globalisation strategy.
Paradoxically, the state of health has worsened in many of the developing countries at the same time as the world's biomedical knowledge has been undergoing an explosive development. This challenge presents a new possibility to promote international collaboration in biomedical research with relevance for developing countries. But just as importantly, there is a need for totally new research fields, e.g. how to spread this knowledge to the areas that need it the most, including the poorest populations in the remotest regions. Likewise, the lack of cheap interventions of diseases which only occur in developing countries deprives especially the poor of the right to access to the best treatment and maintains the evil cycle of poverty and disease. Thus, global health becomes seriously dependent on other research fields.
At the same time the opening of Eastern Europe has revealed a development which is difficult to control, an example being Russia which has seen infant mortality falling, while the mortality among young adults has increased dramatically due to violence, narcotics and alcohol. WHO and the medical science are not geared towards such rapid changes in public health, and there is a growing need for health workers who are more oriented towards a global way of thinking in order to solve such problems – problems which are probably also destined to occur in many of the rapidly emerging Asian economies. China has witnessed a similar development with decreases in mortality in some areas, while the mortality has been rising in others. India's rapid development has had a negative effect on the development in e.g. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The globalisation leads to global, regional and national inequity – a phenomenon know as the globalisation of inequity.
We need to be aware that the interests of rich countries and low income countries concerning global health solutions do not always coincide. The argument about whether foods should be eaten or poured into fuel tanks is just one example. For some countries survival, emergency aid and war are the greatest concerns, while climate, energy and environment are much further down on the to-do-list. The renewed discussions about the use of DDT in the fight against malaria and dengue constitute yet another example showing that the possible solutions are connected to who defines the problem and the need.
