Protecting the Health of the Poor : Social Movements in the South

Nowhere is the injustice of the global distribution of income and wealth more palpable than in health. While the world's affluent spend fortunes on the most trifling treatments, poor people's lives are ruined and often cut short prematurely by challenges that could easily be overcome at low cost: childbirth, diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS, measles, pneumonia. Millions are avoidably dying from such causes each year and billions of lives avoidably blighted by these diseases of poverty.

Drawing on in-depth empirical research spanning Asia, Latin America, and Africa, this path-breaking collection offers fresh perspectives from critically engaged scholars. Protecting the Health of the Poor presents a call and a vision for unified efforts across geographies, levels and sectors to make the right to health truly universal.

“Provides essential guidance for all development practitioners and reminds us to beware of easy fixes.” —Saman Yazdani Khan, Centre for Health and Population Studies, Pakistan

“This timely volume explores poverty and health in the context of the free market. The application of human rights to safeguard the health of poor people is illustrated with clarity and conviction.” —Lucia D'Ambruoso, University of Aberdeen

“A thought-provoking and provocative collection of essays that amount to an urgently needed call for action in promoting global health. Contains important contributions from scholars and development practitioners in many countries.” —Nicole Hassoun, Binghamton University

“Presents compelling evidence of diverse health inequities, traversing both political economy and political ecology, that continue to haunt global conscience.” —Rajib Dasgupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University

“This book is a comprehensive assessment of the health consequences of poverty: it is courageous in its honesty and appropriately demanding of its reader. We must act.” —Stephen Leeder, University of Sydney (Emeritus)