Chan Calls For ‘Moral Dimension’ In Critical Public Policies

World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan on Monday urged governments and others to incorporate a “moral dimension” into trade, finance, food security and public health as the world works to correct harm done by “greed” and right itself economically.

“Crises like the food crisis, the financial crisis, climate change, and pandemic influenza will deepen the misery and worsen the health of people and countries that already suffer the most,” Chan told the opening of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) 2009 High-level Segment, being held 6-9 July in Geneva.

“Too many models for development assumed that living conditions and health status would somehow automatically improve when countries modernised, liberalised their trade, and experienced rapid economic growth,” Chan said. “But this did not happen. Instead, differences, within and between countries, in income levels, in opportunities, and in health status, are greater today than at any time in recent history.”

Globalization, she added, “has not turned out to be the rising tide that lifts all boats. Instead, wealth has been created and spread in waves that lift the bigger boats but swamp or sink many smaller ones.”

“This is the lesson that experts and analysts in sectors with far more clout than health now see, loud and clear, because of the financial crisis,” Chan said. “We are now hearing calls, from multiple world leaders, for transformational changes in the polices that govern the way the world works.

“The international systems need to be re-engineered to incorporate a moral dimension,” she concluded. “They need to be transformed by policies that respond to the concerns and values of society.”

Full speech here.