Global Health (Ethics)

Eine Bestandsaufnahme in programmatischer Absicht

Abstract

As a feld that is conceivably broad with regard to discipline and place, academic global health is held together by its normative bracket of the dual goal of global health improvement and equity. A socio-ethical refection aimed at this must take into account responsible actors, motives, goals, means and circumstances, which difer greatly in terms of levels and location. The levels range from international organisations to cooperation on the ground, it is about measures in all parts of the world, about protection and restoration of health, accordingly about all policy areas as well as the health systems themselves everywhere. In doing so, it is important to fnd responsible positions in the diferent motives of self-interest and human rights, orientation towards majorities and minorities, short-term and long-term perspectives, positions that correspond to the dual goal of the greatest possible health beneft and heath equity. Eurocentric assumptions and interests are to be problematized as well as the identity politics of elites in other parts of the world. In respective ethical approaches, an open, internationally and interculturally consented universalism, in which classical socio-ethical concerns such as rights/freedoms and solidarity/common good can be found, must be combined with a high sensitivity to contexts of established values and very diferent economic and ecological conditions.