Examining the global health arena: strengths and weaknesses of a convention approach to global health challenges.

The article comprises a conceptual framework to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a global health convention. The analyses are inspired by Lawrence Gostin's suggested Framework Convention on Global Health. The analytical model takes a starting-point in events tentatively following a logic sequence: Input (global health funding), Processes (coordination, cooperation, accountability, allocation of aid), Output (definition of basic survival needs), Outcome (access to health services), and Impact (health for all). It then examines to what degree binding international regulations can create order in such a sequence of events. We conclude that a global health convention could be an appropriate instrument to deal with some of the problems of global health. We also show that some of the tasks preceding a convention approach might be to muster international support for supra-national health regulations, negotiate compromises between existing stakeholders in the global health arena, and to utilize WHO as a platform for further discussions on a global health convention.

Doctors as teachers

Because general practitioners como into direct contact with large numbers of people, the possibility exists for them to communicate messages that can help to prevent cardiovascular diseases, malignancies and other serious conditions. In order for this to be achieved on the greatest possible scale, however, most doctors will have to develop their educational skills