Global Health: Impact of Foreign Policies on Public Health Standards

This article discusses the impact of foreign policies on public health standards globally. It covers topics such as TRIPS agreement, tobacco control, GATT, and national security measures.

Running head: GLOBAL HEALTH
GLOBAL HEALTH
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1GLOBAL HEALTH
Maintenance of a decent standard of health has now become a global concern all over
the world which is the primary reason why countries all over the world are relying upon
various foreign policies in order to ensure a safer public health standard. However, it is
critical to note here that the extent to which the foreign policies has affected the health
globally has elicited both a positive as well as a negative effect.
With the incorporation of stringent rules pertaining to exclusive protection of patent
laws to maintain exclusiveness of the pharmaceutical formulations used in drugs, agreed
upon by the TRIPS agreement and public health, undertaken at Doha, it became extremely
difficult for the underprivileged proportion of population dwelling in the underdeveloped
nations to afford the super expensive, patent protected drug formulations (Gostin &
Friedman,2013). Although, the declaration was undertaken in order to discourage the trade of
duplicated formulations to maintain the spirit of quality and exclusiveness, however
reflecting on the scenario the World Trade Organization in 2003, amended the law in order to
promote import of cheaper pharmaceutical drugs for the benefit of the poor proportion of the
global population by enforcing ‘compulsory licencing’. However, despite all the measures the
developing nations are not able to incorporate the flexibilities due to the restrictions imposed
on TRIPS measures in order to safeguard the economic interests at the cost of public health
compensation.
In order to spread global awareness about the carcinogenic effect of tobacco, in the
year of 2003, the World Health Assembly set up the convention for tobacco control and took
massive steps to highlight the harmful effects of tobacco smoking including awareness about
lung cancer (Wilkinson,2013). WHO successfully tied up with various non-governmental
organizations in order to spread awareness about successful interventions proven by various
research studies. However, the treaty faced severe opposition from the major tobacco
exporter countries of the world, that included U.S.A, Japan, Germany and China and finally

2GLOBAL HEALTH
the treaty was signed with the inclusion of ‘flexibilities’ that led to the weakening of the spirit
of the treaty for the economic benefit of all leading tobacco producing industries.
The GATT deals with the reduction of the trade-tariff rates for encourage the trade of
pharmaceutical products that include medical drugs, vaccines and bio enzymes; however
there is an increased need to incorporate stringent measures that would keep a close check in
terms of maintenance of quality (Tangermann,2017). This is because, inadequate regulation
of pathological specimens like blood and tissue fluids led to the development of diseases such
as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C due to contagious transmission facilitated through trade and
commerce. Also, wide-spread epidemic caused by the HINI virus or the Ebola virus has
raised a matter of concern among all the nations across the world (Heymann et al.,2015). The
large proportion of population affected by the Ebola fever, Swine flu or the drug resistant
Tuberculosis has been treated as a primary concern and as a result there is an extensive need
to include strict national security measures in compliance with foreign policy.

3GLOBAL HEALTH
References:
Gostin, L. O., & Friedman, E. A. (2013). Towards a framework convention on global health:
a transformative agenda for global health justice. Yale J. Health Pol'y L. & Ethics, 13,
1.
Heymann, D. L., Chen, L., Takemi, K., Fidler, D. P., Tappero, J. W., Thomas, M. J., ... &
Kalache, A. (2015). Global health security: the wider lessons from the west African
Ebola virus disease epidemic. The Lancet, 385(9980), 1884-1901.
Tangermann, S. (2017). Multilateral rules for agriculture: From GATT to WTO. Handbook
of International Food and Agricultural Policies, 3.
Wilkinson, R. (2013). The WTO: Crisis and the governance of global trade. Routledge.