Global Health Watch - Global

This project involves seeking broad participation in a publication that will then serve as a tool to stimulate dialogue and change. A collaboration by public health experts, non-governmental organisations, community groups, health workers, and academics, Global Health Watch includes chapters (some with discrete sub-sections) on various global health issues. Reflected in this publication, organisers say, is a commitment to the participation of diverse voices in the civil society community as part of a strategy that includes the following elements:

• re-connecting global civil society with the institutions of global health governance
• promoting human rights as the basis for health policy, as a corrective to the market-led policy agenda (which organisers say tends to fragment and exclude)
• placing health and health inequities within a broader political economy perspective
• placing health and health inequities within a multi-sectoral perspective. The Watch will explicitly link health to other sectors such as the environment, international finance, agriculture and food security, war, housing, land rights, conflict, and education
• linking research and analysis to advocacy. The Watch will provide recommendations and encourage advocacy actions

The publication process reflects this strategy. First, organisers sought contributions from authors who have expertise in various global health issues. The idea was not to commission new research but, rather, to draw on the work of the many NGOs and academics who have done related research and analysis. Organisers extended a call for participation to activists, health workers, and academics from around the world to submit case studies and testimonies; these submissions form part of the electronic accompaniment to the Watch. Chapters are written by different authors; a special effort was made to ensure that the authors are representative of all regions worldwide.

Second, in addition to these chapters, the report will feature a section that includes testimonies from organisations and individuals from around the world. Project organisers collected stories and experiences around the following topics:

1. The effects of privatisation and commercialisation on access to health care and the quality of health care in the developing world; and ways in which advocacy has improved access to health services in the developingworld.
2. The effect of privatisation on access to water and sanitation services in the developing world.

The publication will be used as a tool to encourage public debate about global health issues and the role of multilateral organisations in health. Here again, the focus is on promoting substantial participation of civil society. Specifically:

• The Watch is made freely available on the web (click here for access); organisers will subsidise the publication of the hard copy version in poorer countries at a cheaper price. In addition, the main messages of the Watch will be promoted in diverse media.
• Shortened versions of the report in languages other than English will be produced for dissemination to grassroots organisations and other civil society groups.
• Civil society groupings will be encouraged, and possibly coordinated, to encourage individuals to take the Watch to their national decision-makers. An underlying strategy will be to seek formal and explicit endorsement of the report or specific chapters from as many individuals and NGOs as possible so that there will be a broad sense of ownership of the report.
• Meetings will be called with heads of the global health institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO), and they will be asked to respond publicly to the issues presented in the Watch. These meetings will be part of a broader campaign around a number of cross-cutting recommendations related to the publication's key themes.

The first edition of the Watch was launched at the People's Health Assembly in Ecuador, July 2005.

Health, Equity.

According to organisers, global civil society does not participate strongly and consistently in international health advocacy. Calls on policy makers to address fundamental causes of ill-health and failing health systems, they say, are weak and uncoordinated. This occurs at a time where the growing disparities in health care consumption between the rich and the poor have grown alarmingly within and between countries.

The Watch consists of approximately 100,000 words, but is envisioned that the precise scope and size of the report will change slightly as it is re-published on a regular basis.