Effects of Globalisation on Healthcare

 EFFECTS ON GLOBALISATION ON HEALTHCARE

As we can see there is movement of both goods and people that increased the opportunities for the spread of disease around the world. There are  also concerns about the following: potential public health problems due to market liberalisation, the emergence of new diseases globally and worsening of existing ones due to climate change and governmental oversight over economic policies that can affect spending on healthcare. International corporation as a result of globalisation had a huge impact on practices of health on many countries including Europe.

Globalisation in a general view is causing profound and diverse myriad of changes in the whole nature of society that can bring in new possibilities and risks too. The effect of globalisation in healthcare are resulting in concern on health of citizens.

Globalisation itself is a very complex process where there is the interactive and dynamic co-evaluation of various cultural, economic, technological, environmental and social norms and trends at different conceivable scales. 

According to Rennen and Martens: Globalisation is defined on a modern notion as an intensification of cross-national cultural, economic, political, social and technological interactions that lead to the set up transactional structures and global integration of cultural, economic, environmental, political and social processes on global, supernational, national, regional and local levels. 

However, the recognition on healthcare goes very far and beyond the present capacity of our psychological ability to capture and decipher the dynamics of the world that we are living in. This may be due to uncertainty and ignorance of what the global system itself is all about. 

Globalisation has positive and negative effects to healthcare. One of the major concerns because of which healthcare is primarily affected by globalisation is through the increasing and worsening of internationalisation of different health risks. When it comes to defining the terms and dimensions of risks of health, like technological, economic, social, political and cultural as well as scientific aspects, the connection between healthcare and globalisation are quite difficult. Globalisation itself is multifaceted process that can affect healthcare in different ways. 

According to Woodward et al, 2001 (Woodward D, Drager N, Beaglehole R, Lipson D ,2001), the consequences of globalization in health is that it can either be direct, at the level of the entire populations, individuals and various healthcare delivery systems, or indirect through the economy and other factors such as sanitation, water supply and education.

With the complex and complicated intensity of the problems that concern that effects of globalisation in healthcare, it is mandate that we concentrate on the risks of health and delivery of healthcare to people who are strongly related to the central core of aspects of globalisation phenomenon. This includes travel, trade and exchange of ideas and information.

The liberalisation of international trade policies brough forth multilateral trade negotiations in the past 50 years that ended in the setting up of World Trade Organisation according to Bettcher et, 2000. We can’t deny that economic wise, progress in trade is very beneficial. At the back of economic advantages of globalisation, the risks of health of the people are highly visible. The important examples of health risks are alcohol, tobacco, and global epidemics, the development of non-communicable diseases as well as trade in health services. Globalisation brings a lot of risks to healthcare but on the other hand, it can bring in myriad of benefits. The improvement of information technology has widely increased in speech in exchange of information resulting in facilitating the ease of flow of data. The discoveries in medical in different countries can be made readily available to patients from other countries.

Globalisation served as activator in speeding the connections in medical researchers across the world who are working into one health concern. This was the best illustration by the response of global community to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Internet saved as the link between scientists working on global cooperation to impressively and swiftly identify SARS virus and developing of the diagnostic test.

Globalisation comes with the ounce of responsibility. It is voluntary that governments and other international institution should function in the improvisation of healthcare and the proper management of negative effects of global mobilisation.