The Corporate Assault on Global Health

Meredith Fort, author/ editor of Sickness and Wealth: The Corporate Assault on Global Health (South End Press, 2004) will be speaking in Berkeley on Monday, September 20, 2004 at 4 PM in room 714 C, University Hall.

Meredith will introduce her book which exposes how actions of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and other corporate interests limit people’s access to medical care, essentially condemning millions to premature death and disease around the globe. Sickness and Wealth provides a history of health and "development" strategies that reveal their grim consequences throughout the world, as well as highlighting the work of activists and organizations currently working for improved global health. Meredith’s discussion of Sickness and Wealth will use examples from her work in the U.S. and Guatemala, where she has been working with the National Health Advocacy Platform since 1997.

Meredith is also a member of the Peoples Health Movement/ Movimiento de Salud de los Pueblos which is co-sponsoring this event with the International Health Dept of UC-Berkeley. The PHM is a growing coalition of grassroots organizations and others, dedicated to challenging the prevailing system of health care delivery and economic development that is failing to serve the poor worldwide.

Contributors to Sickness and Wealth include: include Stephen Bezruchka, Joseph Brenner, Patrick Bond, Alejandro Cerón, Abhijit Das, Paul Davis, Meredith Fort, Oscar Gish, Stephen Gloyd, Tim Holtz, Evelyne Hong, Celia Iriart, Patrick Kachur, Mary Anne Mercer, Emerson Merhy, Ellen Shaffer, Vandana Shiva, Juan Carlos Verdugo, Howard Waitzkin, and Seiji Yamada.
Praise for Sickness and Wealth:

“…Global economic and social arrangements are increasingly inegalitarian and are bad for our health. Militarization, privatization and unfair trade policies are in fact tightly linked to diseases such as malaria, cholera, and AIDS. Sickness and Wealth exposes the mechanisms of these connections.” –Paul Farmer, Partners in Health

“An exceptional mix of activist and scholarly voices makes Sickness and Wealth indispensable to those interested in health and social justice.” –Sarah Shannon, Hesperian Foundation