FIP president says “human face” can get globalisation
back on track
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Peter Kielgast: globalisation is
the key to a better life for people in developing countries
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In his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the
congress, FIP president Peter Kielgast called for closer contact between
the World Health Professions’ Alliance — an international partnership
of pharmacy, medicine and nursing organisations — and the World Trade
Organisation in order to bring a human face and positive content into
the process of globalisation. “I am convinced that the three professions
jointly can contribute to getting the globalisation process back on track,”
he said.
Mr Kielgast, who is a community pharmacist in Denmark,
reminded participants of his prediction at the 2000 congress in Vienna
that there would be an increasing gap between advocates for increased
globalisation and protesters against it. His predictions had been all
too true.
Although the forces against globalisation were still
a patchwork of interests, it was now time for governments and world economic
leaders to communicate the goals and positive effects of WTO agreements
more convincingly. It was a fact that WTO agreements did take protection
of health and the environment into consideration. Yet, when world leaders
met, their minds were more focused on global free trade, harmonisation
of international standards and protection of intellectual property rights.
The process of globalisation had been characterised
by the formation of huge companies through mergers. “This goes as well
for the field of health, where it seems that only the sky is the limit
for how big pharmaceutical companies can become,” he said. And there were
fears in developing countries that implementation of WTO agreements would
harm their less developed pharmaceutical industries and lead to increased
costs of drugs. Such concerns had been illustrated when a consortium of
transnational pharmaceutical companies decided to sue the South African
government. But in spite of the fact that it seemed that the South African
government had no intention of supplying its HIV-infected population with
AIDS medicines, the pharmaceutical industry was portrayed as the evil
party, depriving millions of people in Africa and Asia of medicines that
could prolong their lives considerably. Behind that court case lay an
unwillingness of the developed world to share part of its wealth with
those living in destitute conditions in the poorest areas of the world,
Mr Kielgast said.
The pharmaceutical industry was an important partner
for FIP, which did not want to see the industry given unfair treatment
by the media. The South African court case should never have taken place
because no one stood to gain, least of all the HIV-infected African people.
Mr Kielgast invited the leaders of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers’ Associations into a partnership for achieving the best
use of economical resources within health systems. “And it is my hope
that pharmacists will expand their field of operation to the policy-making
departments of the pharmaceutical industry and let their voices be heard
when global strategies are formed,” said Mr Kielgast.
He went on to say that if the WTO was to gain world-wide
public support, political and economic leaders would have to listen to
concerns expressed. Health services, particularly when related to health
promotion and disease control, would not work if the necessary resources
were not provided. More studies were needed to investigate the impact
WTO agreements had on health issues and health systems. Furthermore, in
order to reduce the violence that had become associated with international
meetings, the future work of the WTO had to bring issues surrounding health
care, the environment and developing countries stronger into focus.
Globalisation was the key to a better life for people
in developing countries. Developing countries with open economies grew
by 4.5 per cent a year in the 1970s and ’80s while those with closed economies
grew by 0.7 per cent. This showed that WTO agreements basically were good
medicine. But the negative side effects had to be reduced. However, it
had to be faced that some do lose from globalisation. As trade barriers
fell, companies that provide products that are more efficiently produced
elsewhere had to specialise in what they did best.
A free world is the best medicine
All in all, a free world was the best medicine for
the eradication of extreme poverty and inequity in health. The United
Nations general secretary Kofi Annan had said that the cure did not lie
in protesting against globalisation itself. The poor were poor not because
of too much globalisation but because of too little.
Mr Kielgast told congress participants that the
health challenges of the 21st century were not restricted to developing
countries. Everyone was confronted with them. Because of that there was
a need for co-ordinated action, for a forum for debate, for dissemination
of information and knowledge, and for presentation of best practice, with
the aim of “reducing the waste caused by repeating mistakes and reinventing
the wheel”. FIP was well positioned to play such a role for the pharmaceutical
profession because it had established firm and constructive relationships
with the World Health Organization at central and regional levels. By
establishing these relations, FIP had equipped its members with the insight
they would need when they entered into dialogue with their governments
and health authorities. “It is up to you to make use of this insight to
best position our profession at national level,” he told participants.
But FIP did not have the resources to provide “ready cooked meals”. What
it could do was provide members with quality raw materials, where they
themselves had to be the creative chefs preparing what was appropriate
for the markets they served.
Mr Kielgast was pleased with the results of FIP’s
contact with the WHO. The pharmacist was seen as being synonymous with
credibility, ethics and consumer trust. Recognition at the highest level
was encouraging, as was the respect shared by partners in the World Health
Professions’ Alliance. That partnership was one to be copied at national
level, and those who would benefit most would be users of health care
services.
Turning finally to advances in technology, Mr Kielgast
said that revolution in global communication and easy access to databases
would lead to early detection of disease outbreaks. Advances in medical
technology would bring important improvements in the field of disease
prevention and creative care. The risk of acquiring a disease would itself
be treated as a disease. Developments in genetic engineering, organ transplantation
and cloning raised serious biomedical issues and there was a need for
internationally accepted standards. Mr Kielgast believed that the World
Health Professions’ Alliance could contribute constructively to the setting
of such standards.
In the coming years, health systems would be redesigned
as a result of developments in communications and medical technology.
Directions in drug design would be influenced by scientists’ ability to
read genomic sequences and identify sites associated with inheritance
and predisposition to disease. These developments held great potential
for the pharmacy profession “if we can avoid using our strengths to build
fences to protect existing territory and instead create platforms where
we are well positioned to make use of the opportunities offered by these
advances in technology,” he warned. FIP offered its members just such
a platform, one that provided cross-cultural contacts, and that linked
practice to sciences and developing nations to developed ones.
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