Learning module

Health 10
Quarter 3

Lesson 1: EXISTING GLOBAL HEALTH INITIATIVES

1
QUARTER CONTENT PREVIEW

This quarter discusses some important global health initiatives that aim to promote the
health and welfare of people all over the world. Being aware of these global health initiatives
will help in the easy implementation in the local level.
As you explore this quarter, you will be aware of different government and
nongovernment agencies that work together for the well-being of people globally.

CONTENT STANDARD
Demonstrate an awareness of global health initiatives

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

Discuss the significance of global health initiatives
Describe how global health initiatives positively impact on people’s health in various
countries.
Analyze the issues in the implementation of global health initiatives.
Recommended ways of adopting global health initiatives to local or national context.

Getting Ready to Learn and Understand

Main Quarter Sections
Existing Global Health Initiatives
1. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Significance of Global Health Initiatives
2. WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
3. Global Mental Health Action Plan
4. Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol
5. Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations

EXISTING GLOBAL HEALTH INITIATIVES

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

In September 2000 at the Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of world leaders in
history took place. These leaders adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their
nations to new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting ot the series of time-
bond targets, with a deadline at 2015, which have become known as the Millennium
Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets
for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income, poverty, hunger, disease, lack of
adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental
sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health
education, shelter, and security.
2
 This global partnership for development of developed countries with international
organization aims to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The eight
international development goals are the following.

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

2. To achieve universal primary education.
3. To promote gender equality and empower women.
4. To reduce child mortality.
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and ither disease.
7. To ensure a global environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development.

The Millennium Development Goals are interdependent; all the MDGs influence health,
and health influence ]s all the MDGs. For instance, better health enables children to learn and
adults to earn. Gender equality is essential to the attainment for better health. Reducing poverty,
hunger, and environmental degradation positively influences, but also depends on, better health.

Developed countries and international organizations give assistance to developing

countries in different ways. With clear set of objectives and targets they plan to achieve a “global
partnership for development” by doing the following:

1. Supporting fair trade

2. Debt relief
3. Increasing aid
4. Access to affordable essential medicines
5. Encouraging technology transfer.

SIGNIFICANCE OF GLOBAL HEALTH INITIATIVES

How far have they gone in achieving the targets? It is nearing to attaining the targets?
Based on reports the world has made significant progress in achieving many of the goals.
Between 1990 ang 2002, average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent.
The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million. Child mortality
rates fell from 103 deaths per 1000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to
nearly 65 years. An additional 8 percent of the developing world’s people received access to
water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access improved sanitation services.

If you will look at the whole world, progress has been far from uniform across the world
or across the Goals. There are huge differences across and within countries. Within countries,

3
poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and
underreported by traditional indicators.

The epicenter of crisis is Sub-Saharan Africa with continuing food insecurity, a rise of
extreme poverty, strikingly high child and maternal mortality, and large numbers of people living
in slums, and a widespread shortfall for most of the MDGs. The region with the fastest progress
is Asia. Other regions have mixed records, particularly Latin America, the transition economies,
and the Middle East and North Africa, often with slow or no progress on some of the Goals and
persistent differences undermining progress on others.

With this scenario, there is a need to give more support for the countries with very slow
or no progress to achieve the eight international development goals. Millennium Development
Goals are very important in attaining world peace. When the problem is properly addressed and
no one is suffering from extreme poverty and hunger, many other health-related issues will be
solved.

ACTIVITY 1
Remembering What you Learned
1. What is MDGs?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

2. What supports did developed and international organizations promise to give to developing
countries.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

ACTIVITY 2
Thinking What You Learned

1. Explain how each goal influences health and how health influences all the MDGs?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

4
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

ACTIVITY 3
In the Philippines, there are several programs and projects to achieve universal primary
education, one of the MDGs, what would you do to help achieve that goal
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

5
 Lesson 2: WHO FRAMEWORK CONVENTION TOBACCO CONTROL

The World Health Organization (WHO) has long been active in preventing the numerous
health issues that result from tobacco consumption. As the leading cause of preventable death
globally, tobacco has seen increasing in both its consumption and its mortality rate worldwide
with the increasing interconnectedness of the global economy. Although tobacco related-diseases
differ from communicable diseases that have traditionally been the concern of the WHO, the
effects of globalization have made tobacco increasingly relevant for such intergovernmental
authorities.

Under the supports of tobacco activists, Ruth Roemer, the WHO urged individual
countries throughout the 1980s and 1990s to adopt national laws that have been shown to reduce
tobacco use. A framework convention would “promote” according to its proponents, the WHO
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) marked the first time that the WHO went so
far to enact its international legal powers to address the problem.

The FCTC was developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic. The
spread of the tobacco epidemic is facilitated through a variety of complex factors with cross-
border effects, including trade liberalization and direct foreign investment. Other factors that
contributed to the explosive increase in tobacco use are the following:

1. global marketing
2. transnational tobacco advertising
3. promotion and sponsorship
4. international movement of contraband, and
5. counterfeit cigarettes.

The WHO FCTC is the first treaty negotiated under the sponsorships of the World Health
Organization. It is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest
standard of health. It represents a paradigm shift in developing a regulatory strategy to address
addictive substances; in contrast to previous drug control treaties, the WHO FCTC asserts the
importance of demand reduction strategies as well as supply issues.

The treaty came into force on February 27, 2005 with 168 countries signatories and is
legally binding in 180 ratifying countries. The FCTC, one of the most quickly ratified treaties in
United Nations history, is a supernational agreement that seeks “to protect present and future
generations from the devasting health; social, environmental, and economic consequences of
tobacco consumption; and exposure to tobacco smoke” by enacting a set of universal standards
stating the dangers of tobacco and limiting its use in all forms worldwide. The FCTC mark one
of the first multilateral, binding agreements regarding a chronic, noncommunicable disease.
The treaty’s provisions include rules that govern the following:
1. production
2. sale

6
3. distribution
4. advertisement
5. taxation of tobacco

The nonprice measures to reduce the demand for tobacco are as follows.
1. taxation of tobacco protection from exposure to tobacco smoke.
2. taxation of tobacco regulation of the contents of tobacco products
3. taxation of tobacco regulation of tobacco product disclosure
4. taxation of tobacco packaging and labelling of tobacco prodeucts
5. taxation of tobacco education, communication, training and public awareness
6. taxation of tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship and
7. taxation of tobacco demand reduction measures concerning tobacco dependence and cessation.

The core supply reduction provisions in the WHO FCTC are contained in Articles 15-17.

1. Illicit trade in tobacco products

2. Sales to and by minors; and;
3. Provision of support for economically viable alternative activities.

Some issues in the implementation of this global initiatives are as follows;

1. International tobacco control legislation would unduly harm economies such as tobacco
farming, manufacturing, and sale.
2. It will inevitably hurt farmers who currently depend on tobacco for their livelihoods.

The answer to the issues that WHO FCTC would do harm to the economy and the
tobacco growers and workers are the following:

1. Help tobacco farmers make the transition from tobacco to alternative crops.

2. Parties shall, in cooperation which each other and with competent international and regional
intergovernmental organizations, promote, as appropriate, economically viable alternatives for
tobacco workers, growers and, as the case may be, individual sellers. In particular, the FCTC
favors sustainable development options over tobacco control advocates are encouraged to invest
in better infrastructure, especially transportation, to ease farmers’ access to new and foreign
markets when making the transition, while simultaneously improving farmers’ access to credit
that may be necessary in converting their existing facilities.

GLOBAL MENTAL HEATH ACTION PLAN (2013-2020)

WHO’s comprehensive mental health action plan (2013-2020) has now been adopted by
th
the 66 World Health Assembly. The action plan is the outcome of extensive global and regional
consultations over the last year with a broad array of stakeholders including: 135 member states,
60 WHO CCs and other academic centers, 76 NGOs, 17 other stakeholders and experts.

7
The four major objectives of the action plan are to:

1. Strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health

2. provide comprehensive, integrated, and responsive mental health and social care services in
community-based settings.
3. Implement strategies for promotion and prevention in mental health.
4. Strengthen information systems, evidence, and research for mental health.

The plan sets important new directions for mental health including a central role for provision of
community-based care and a greater emphasis on human rights. It introduces the notion of
recovery, moving away from a pure medical model, and addresses income generation and
education opportunities, housing and social services and other social determinants of mental
health in order to ensure a comprehensive response to mental health.

The action plan also emphasizes the following:

1. empowerment of people with mental disabilities

2. the need to develop a strong civil society, and
3. importance of promotion and prevention activities including the preventing suicides.

GLOBAL STRATEGY TO REDUCE HARMFUL USE OF ALCOHOL

Delegates from 193 member states of World Health Organization (WHO) reached
consensus at the WHO Assembly on a global strategy to confront the harmful use of alcohol.
The harmful use of alcohol is a serious health problem and it affects practically all
individuals on an international scale. Health problems from dangerous alcohol use arise in the
form of acute and chronic conditions, and adverse social consequences are common when they
are associated with alcohol consumption. The harmful use of alcohol resulted in the following:

1. It is the third leading risk factor for poor health globally.

8
2. It was responsible for almost 4% of all deaths in the world, according to the estimates for
2004.
3. It can have devastating effects on individuals and their families.
4. It can seriously affect community life.
5. It is one of the four most common modifiable and preventable risk factors for major
noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
6. It contributes to the health problem caused by communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and
HIV/AIDS.

Reducing the harmful use of alcohol by effective policy measures and by providing a
relevant infrastructure to successfully implement those measures is much more than a public
health issue. Definitely, it is a development issue, since the level of risk associated with the
harmful use of alcohol in developing countries is much higher than that in high income countries,
increasingly protected by comprehensive laws and the assurance that these are implemented.

The global strategy focuses on ten key ares of policy options and interventions at the
national level and four priority areas for global action.

The ten areas for national action are:

1. leadership, awareness, and commitment;
2. health services’ response;
3. community action;
4. drunk-driving policies and countermeasures;
5. availability of alcohol;
6. marketing of alcoholic beverages;
7. pricing policies;
8. reducing the public health impact of illicit alcohol and informally produced alacohol.
9. reducing the negative consequences of drinking and alcohol intoxication, and;
10. monitoring surveillance

The four priority areas for global action are:

1. public health advocacy and partnership

2. technical support and capacity building
3. production and dissemination of knowledge, and;
4. resource mobilization.

The implementation of the global strategy will require the following:

1. active collaboration with member states

2. appropriate engagement of international development partners, civil society, the private sector,
as well as public health and research institutions

9
 WHO and its member states are dedicated to work together to address the key areas of
policy options and interventions, to interact with relevant stakeholder and to ensure that the
strategy is implemented both nationally and globally. The progress of the strategy was assessed
at the sixty-sixth World Health Assembly in 2013.

GLOBAL ALLIANCES FOR VACCINES AND IMMUNIZATIONS

GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and immunization) is a global
health partnership of public and private sector organizations dedicated to “immunization for all”.
Gavi was launched in 2000, at a time when the distribution of vaccines ti children in the poorest
parts of the world had begun to weaken.

GAVI’s strategy supports its mission to save children’s lives and protect peoples’ health
by increasing access to immunization in poor countries. It contributes to achieving the United
Nations’ Millennium Development Goals by focusing on performance, outcomes, and results. Its
partners provide funding for vaccines and intellectual resources for care advancement. They
contribute, also, to strengthening the capacity of the health system to deliver immunization and
other health services in a sustainable manner.

Since it launch in 2000, GAVI has, contributed to the immunization of an additional 30

million children, helping developing countries prevent more then 5.5 million future deaths from
hepatitis B, Hemophilus influenza type B (hib), measles, pertussis, pneumococcal disease, polio,
rotavirus diarrhea, and yellow fever. GAVI can accelerate to new vaccines that will save a
further four million lives. This would have a substantial effect on achieving tge goal to lesse by
two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate by 2015.

The Alliance brings together governments of industrialized and developing countries, the
World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNECEF), the World Bank.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, vaccine manufactures, nongovernmental organizations,
and academic institutions.

As a global health financer, GAVI contributes to the achievement of Millennium

Development Goal (MDG) 4, which aims to reduce the global under five mortality rate by two-
thirds between 1990 and 2015.

ACTIVITY 1
Remembering What You Learned
What do the following acronyms stand for?

1.WHO FCTC
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

2. GAVI

10
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
ACTIVITY 2
Thinking What You Learned
Do you think, there is really a need for global cooperation and national action for tobacco
control? Why?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

ACTIVITY 3
Applying What You Learned
In the Philippines, there are several programs and projects in support of the global action for
tobacco control. What help can you do to your family and neighbors so they will be protected
from exposure to tobacco smoke?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

11