NIGH Nightingale Initiative for Global Health Declaration Campaign -- creating a healthy world together - Nursing and Social Determinants of Health

If prevention is the heart of public health, then equity is its soul, according Magaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, WHO.

Every aspect of government and the economy has the potential to affect health and the livelihood of nurses – finance, education, housing, employment, transport, and health, just to name a few. Coherent action across government, at all levels, is essential to improve the lives of nurses throughout the world and ensure health equity for all.

Different national and international government policies, depending on their nature, can either improve or worsen health and health equity. Poor economic policies and the current financial crisis are having a serious impact of the lives of nurses throughout the world.

Throughout the world, World Bank's structural adjustment policies have eroded carefully created health programmes and the working conditions of nurses. They have led to drastic cuts in health budgets, laying off nurses and members of other essential workforces. The IMF policies have a direct impact on the health sector and its personnel. The real income of nurses has decreased, buying less with the same amount of money. Reduced government spending has resulted in downsizing much-needed health facilities.

Says Rose Wanjiru, Policy Coordinator at ActionAid Kenya: “In Kenya, we have been able to train enough nurses and teachers, but they have remained unemployed. We have a requirement to have 70,000 health workers, but we have only employed 40,000. The remaining 30,000 are launching out, looking for other things and are looking for ways to get to the US or to Europe, and in the process, we have a lot of our investment lost.”

Summer school on global health and inequality

Class, Work, Gender, Ethnicity, Social biological translation, Lifecourse epidemiology, Disability, inequality and human rights, Russian mortality crisis, Public health ethics, Politics of health and equity, Globalization and health and Inequalities in dental public health. These are among the topical issues that will be discussed at the University College of London (UCL) Health and Society Summer School, which will be held from 13 to 17th July this year.

Global recession is likely to damage our health as well as our wealth, but it also offers an opportunity to build a more equitable economic model. Sir Michael Marmot Director of the International Institute for Society and Health and Chair of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health and Dr Ruth Bell, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, explain the issues.

The G20 Summit: can we trust the IMF with global health?

The G20 summit in London agreed in principle to raise a staggering $1.1 trillion to help save the world from the effects of the global economic meltdown. Much of the funds pledged would be funnelled through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But according to a document published by ActionAid USA, there is mounting evidence that the economic policies promoted and enforced by the IMF may prevent developing countries from being able to spend more in their national budgets, with drastic consequences for health and education budgets being constrained at unnecessarily low levels.