Interventions that improve childhood health directly improve the quality of life and, in addition, have multiplier effects, producing sustained population and economic gains in poor countries. We suggest how contemporary global institutions shaping the development, pricing and distribution of...

Some 18 million people die annually from poverty-related causes. Many more are suffering grievously from treatable medical conditions. These burdens can be substantially reduced by supplementing the rules governing pharmaceutical innovation. Established by the World Trade Organization's TRIPS...

Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care. Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in...

The first and most prominent United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG-1) has been widely celebrated. Yet, four reflections should give us pause. Although retaining the idea of "halving extreme poverty by 2015", MDG-1 in fact sets a much less ambitious target than had been agreed to at the...

We suggest how contemporary global institutions shaping the development, pricing and distribution of vaccines and drugs may be modified to deliver large improvements in health. To support a justice argument for such modification, we show how the current global economic order may contribute to...

The estimates of the extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty provided in the World Bank's World Development Reports for 1990 and 2000/01 are neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line unrelated to any clear conception of what poverty...

Martin Ravallion?s ?One Pager? No. 66 focuses on two key issues: the level of the World Bank?s international poverty line (IPL) and its conversion to other currencies and years. Having written on conversion before (?One Pager? No. 54), I can be brief. The purchasing power parities the Bank uses...