Thammasat University students interested in law, allied health sciences, political science, sociology, anthropology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 15 November Zoom webinar on In the shadow of trade: a critique of Global Health Law.
The event, on Friday, 15 November at 8pm Bangkok time, is organized by the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, the United Kingdom.
The TU Library collection includes books about global health law.
Students are invited to register at this link.
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hSwaqLUxQVmTSS7_1zq-RQ#/registration
The event announcement states:
Lecture summary: In this talk Sharifah Sekalala examines this critical moment in the making of Global Health Law, with two treaty making processes: the newly finalised revisions of the International Health Regulations and ongoing negotiations by the Intergovernmental Negotiation Body for a possible pandemic Accord or Instrument, as we well as soft-law proposals for the World Health Organization proposal for a medical countermeasures platform.
The lecture will illustrate that despite the laudable objectives of creating a new system of international law that attempts to redress previous inequalities in accessing vaccines and countermeasures, they are unlikely to meet these broader objectives. The lecture will argue that this is because, despite being a public good, Global Health Law has always been underpinned by capitalist and post-colonial rationales which privilege trade. In order to make lasting changes, the current system of Global Health Law must focus on broader questions of ‘reparations’ that will achieve greater equity.
Sharifah is a Professor of Global Health Law at the University of Warwick and the Director of the Warwick Global Health Centre. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy and global health. Professor Sekalala is particularly focused on the role of human rights frameworks in addressing global health inequalities. Her research has focused on health crises in Sub-Saharan Africa, international financing institutions and the rise of non-communicable diseases and she has published in leading legal, international relations and public health journals.
Prof Sekalala is currently the PI on a Wellcome-Trust-funded project on digital health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Sekalala is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FaSS) and she has consulted on human rights and health in many developing countries and worked for international organisations such as UNAIDS, the WHO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Her research has also been funded by the Wellcome Trust, GCRF, ESRC, Open Society Foundation and international organisations including the International Labour Organisation and the WHO. Sharifah also sits on the Strategic Advisory Network of the ESRC.
Sharifah holds a PhD in Law (Warwick, 2012), an LLM in Public International Law (Distinction in research, Nottingham, 2006) and an LLB Honours (Makerere University, Uganda 2004). She was called to the Ugandan Bar in 2005.
Chair: Prof Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan
Earlier this year, Professor Sekalala coauthored an Open Access article, Colonialism in the new digital health agenda, in BMJ Global Health.
Abstract
The advancement of digital technologies has stimulated immense excitement about the possibilities of transforming healthcare, especially in resource-constrained contexts. For many, this rapid growth presents a ‘digital health revolution’. While this is true, there are also dangers that the proliferation of digital health in the global south reinforces existing colonialities. Underpinned by the rhetoric of modernity, rationality and progress, many countries in the global south are pushing for digital health transformation in ways that ignore robust regulation, increase commercialisation and disregard local contexts, which risks heightened inequalities. We propose a decolonial agenda for digital health which shifts the liner and simplistic understanding of digital innovation as the magic wand for health justice. In our proposed approach, we argue for both conceptual and empirical reimagination of digital health agendas in ways that centre indigenous and intersectional theories. This enables the prioritisation of local contexts and foregrounds digital health regulatory infrastructures as a possible site of both struggle and resistance. Our decolonial digital health agenda critically reflects on who is benefitting from digital health systems, centres communities and those with lived experiences and finally introduces robust regulation to counter the social harms of digitisation.
Summary box
- Neoliberal policies have led to digital health data being viewed as an asset for multinational corporations and philanthropic foundations in the global north, which we describe as a form of digital health coloniality.
- Although digital health initiatives are perceived to have the potential to transform health systems in the global south and act as an instrument for health justice, they often embed digital coloniality.
- Digital health initiatives entrench discriminatory border politics and racial hierarchies through software, hardware and storage and drastically increase the marketisation and commercialisation of health.
- A decolonial approach to understanding global health enables us to recognise how digital health coloniality affects the global south’s health outcomes and lived experiences and presents opportunities for reimagining digital health in ways that are restorative and transformative.
- Our decolonial agenda for digital health applies alternative decolonial lenses, such as indigenous African philosophical thought, that focus on centring community health experiences in developing robust and locally aligned digital health regulatory infrastructures as a mechanism of resistance to digital health coloniality.
Introduction
The potential of digital health to transform health systems, especially in the global south, has been declared revolutionary.1 The COVID-19 pandemic further sped up the process of digital health, with countries scrambling to institute digital health surveillance, improve digital health systems through the promotion of telemedicine and provide public health information such as vaccinations through health apps.2 3 Postpandemic, digital health is increasingly being seen as critical for future pandemic preparedness, resilient health systems and making universal coverage possible.4 In August 2023, the WHO and the G20 India presidency announced a new global initiative on digital health to support the implementation of the Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025.
Additionally, there has been significant interest and investment in artificial intelligence (AI) by powerful multinational corporations and philanthropic organisations predominantly in the global north for data-driven health solutions targeted mainly at global south countries. These corporations are also investing resources in infrastructure for health data storage, data-driven medical research and implementing predictive analytics for precision medicine.5 Datafication within health leads to a structural shift from social knowledge being a public asset towards a privately funded, processed and owned commodity.6 This creates a vicious circle where power and knowledge are concentrated in the hands of a few while inequalities are continuously entrenched, frustrating efforts to share benefits and promote health equity and justice.
In this article, we argue that while there is excitement about the digital health revolution and its potential to transform health systems in many countries of the global south, some of the risks are currently under-researched. This is due to an individualised examination of digital health systems that focuses mainly on individual rights, such as privacy and security, and a belief that removing barriers to access, skills and benefits would inevitably bridge digital divides and lead to equitable healthcare.7 In this article, we critically analyse how the rhetoric and practices of digitisation of health systems risk entrenching global health inequalities. This approach builds on an emerging literature that seeks to decolonise global health. This body of decolonial work critiques the ways in which knowledge and infrastructure from the global north are privileged in global health at the expense of those from the south. […]
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)