World Poverty and Health

At the invitation of the Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics the philosopher Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale University) is giving a lecture on possibilities to improve international health care. The public lecture entitled "Ein gerechteres globales Gesundheitssystem" (“A Fairer Global Health System”) will be held on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 6 p.m. in lecture hall F2 (Fürstenberghaus, Domplatz 20-22).

About one third of all human deaths are conditioned by poverty. Poverty increases the predisposition for ill health, e.g. by chronical malnutrition, which now affects about one billion people. Poverty, however, also obstructs access to medicine: to doctors and to optimal medication, which for many tropical diseases does not yet exist. By creative reform approaches the health backlog could be decreased considerably.

In his presentation Professor Thomas Pogge is going to explain of which kind such reforms should have to be. Together with an international and interdisciplinary expert team he has developed the “Health Impact Fund” – an alternative incentive system for pharmaceutical research industry which shall enable access to essential medication for the poor as well. Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University and Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics of the Australian National University. In April he is Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics at the University of Münster.