The 2002 World Affairs Challenge explored the obstacles to and opportunities for providing adequate health care for people around the globe. The theme raised issues of distribution of wealth, governmental corruption, policy priorities, economic development, human rights, education, the relative effectiveness of international governmental and non-governmental organizations, the role of private enterprises in international affairs, and even the threat of biological warfare.

While disparities in access to quality health care are nothing new, recent events have helped to raise their profile. The spread of hoof and mouth disease in Europe, the transmission of “mad cow” disease, and provision of pharmaceuticals to Africans infected with the AIDS virus illustrate how much still needs to be done to eradicate disease and provide basic health care to a significant portion of the world’s people.

We hope that 2002 topic helped to raise students’ awareness of the political, economic, social and cultural impediments to providing health care to all people in all countries.
We challenge students to think creatively and propose their own ideas to improve global health.


Some areas explored within this topic were:

• Particular diseases (e.g., polio, AIDS, river blindness, rabies, leichmaniasis, malaria, Chagas’ disease, leprosy, trypanosoma, “mad cow” disease, schistosomiasis)

• Non-governmental organizations (e.g., Médicins Sans Frontières, the Gates Foundation, CARE, the Carter Center, the Red Cross, Operation Smile, ORBIS, UNICEF, Save the Children, the World Health Organization, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health [PATH])

• The practice of withholding essential medical supplies from countries in order to force compliance with other demands (e.g., Iraq)

• The responsibility of private enterprise to provide pharmaceuticals to people and countries that cannot pay for them

• The creation of an infrastructure for health care in developing countries

• Comparisons of health care systems in different countries

• International organizations involved in promoting health around the world (e.g., the World Health Organization)

• Health issues that affect particular populations, such as women or children

• Alternative forms of health care around the world  (e.g., acupuncture, reflexology, herbal cures, etc.)

• The relationship between basic resources and services and health (e.g., access to clean water and adequate sewage treatment)

• Issues that at the intersection of health care and education, including training of doctors and nurses, and informing the public about health and hygiene

• Access to preventive care or nutritional needs (e.g., iodine, fluoride)

• Access to basic medicines (e.g. antibiotics) or supplies (e.g., sterile bandages or eyeglasses)

• Issues that combine health care and trade, including banning imports of particular products from particular countries, or restricting travel to and from certain countries or regions

• Comparisons of mental health care and services around the world

• Care, rehabilitation and rights of the disabled

• The value of good nutrition and how to achieve it; American fast food in other countries; ways to educate developing nations about nutrition; the global cost of poor nutritional availability; how to improve dietary deficiencies that cause irreversible degradation in specific health aspects (tied to food scarcities in numerous nations); should free dietary supplements be handed out; is the importance of good nutrition in its totality only a western concept; what might cause and/or cure the dramatic increase in diabetes in Japan and other Asian countries

• The use of antibiotics in animals that raised for human consumption

• The impact of political corruption on world health