The world is far healthier than ever before.
Global life expectancy is increasing in most countries, and diseases
like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are on the decline.
Despite decades of progress, plenty of work remains.
Every year, more than 6 million children die before their fifth birthday,
the majority by preventable causes.
Rates of asthma are increasing among the young and the old.
And the virus, like H1N1, can spread from San
Diego to Shanghai in only a matter of days.
Those who are tasked with improving global health face three major challenges:
Noncommunicable diseases or NCDs,
Infectious diseases,
and funding for treatment and prevention.
Non-communicable diseases like cancer and diabetes are the world's biggest killers.
In 1993, of the top seven global causes of death were NCDs.
In 2015, it was six out of seven.
This is in part because global life expectancy and standards of living
are on the rise.
As countries get richer and their populations get older,
people are increasingly exposed to the risk factors of NCDs,
such as a sedentary lifestyle, increased substance abuse
and access to processed foods. In Africa,
cancer now kills about 450,000 people annually.
But by 2030, that rate is projected to climb
to almost 1 million people each year.
Non-communicable diseases often require extensive long term care, and access
to affordable treatment
can be a major obstacle in both developing and developed countries.
Unlike NCDs, the rates of infectious diseases are down worldwide.
However, they still present a major global health challenge
because outbreaks are difficult to predict and just as hard to prepare for.
The 2013 Ebola epidemic killed thousands in West Africa.
More recently, Zika has been linked to birth defects in children throughout
Latin America and the Caribbean, and it has scared off tourists
from the worst hit countries, costing local economies billions of dollars.
Health officials can only do so much to respond to infectious diseases
because viruses spread undetected and mutate rapidly.
It becomes a race to protect the healthy and quarantine
the sick in the face of an outbreak.
International coordination
can reduce the odds of a disease spreading to other countries.
But with a crowded cast of 40 government to government donors, 25 U.N.
agencies, 20 global and regional funds and 90 global
initiatives involved in any serious outbreak, coordination is a challenge.
It can be difficult to even determine who's in charge.
The World Health Organization could be taking a leading role.
It was established after World War II for that specific purpose.
But today, its capabilities and resources
are no match for the proliferation of global health problems.
Instead, the majority of funding for these organizations comes
straight from the so-called Two Washingtons, the Gates Foundation,
which gives 68% of the world's private donations in the realm of health.
And the U.S.
government, which provides 52% of all public funding for global health.
While crucial to maintaining health programs around the world,
especially in low income countries dependent on foreign aid.
The concentration of funding for these two sources makes the whole system
extremely vulnerable to personal and political developments.
In 2000, 189 countries made a historic commitment
to improving the lives of the world's poorest citizens, which became eight
specific Millennium Development Goals.
Three of these were health related.
In 2015, the U.N.
replaced these objectives with 17 sustainable development goals,
11 of which deal with improving global health outcomes.
finding new ways to effectively respond to non-communicable
and infectious diseases, and overcoming funding challenges
will help achieve these goals, which are more important than ever before,
because in an increasingly connected world, health in one country
affects health in all.