New book confronts global health threats

Global challenge: Emer Prof Solomon Benatar of UCT's Centre for Bioethics is the lead editor of Global Health and Global Health Ethics.

"The raison d'etre for this book is to draw attention to what we consider to be one of the largest and most important challenges facing humanity in the 21st century - to improve and promote global health."

Emeritus Professor Solomon Benatar of UCT's Centre for Bioethics is the lead editor of Global Health and Global Health Ethics, a new volume published by the Cambridge University Press and launched at UCT on 22 March.

Comprising numerous essays from scholars around the world, the book sets out to addresses essential questions on global health from medical, philosophical and social-scientific perspectives. What can be done? What are our responsibilities? How are global health challenges linked to the global political economy and to issues of social justice?

"In order to answer these questions and achieve ambitious goals we need to understand, among other things, the value systems, modes of reasoning, and power structures that have driven and shaped the world over the past century," says Benatar.

Co-edited by Gillian Brock, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a UCT alum, the volume includes empirical data, in-depth analysis of reasons for widening disparities in global health care, and normative arguments for required action.

"We also need to appreciate the unsustainability of many of our current consumption patterns before we can address threats to the health and lives of current and future generations," said Benatar.