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Europe Posts

Europe

Health tourism can be healthy

Healthcare costs are rising everywhere: in the developed world things can only get worse with ageing populations, while in poor countries there is minimal progress plus a debilitating brain drain.  But health tourism could change all that: health tourism is simply free trade in services – a World Trade Organisation clause that has been ratified by very few countries, although Thailand, Singapore, South Africa and India are already demonstrating how to make big bucks in this specialist trade.

SA should avoid Britain's healthcare mistakes

The South African government is hoping to create a 'universal' health system by imposing increasingly onerous regulations on the private sector. Evidence from Britain's health system shows this is doomed to failure.

Get Real About AIDS

UNAIDS has systematically perpetuated myths about the nature and scope of the AIDS pandemic in order to keep the disease high on the political agenda.  As a result, many billions of dollars have been wasted on prevention programmes that have no basis in science.

Bottoms up to Earth Day

The top-down solutions to environmental problems favoured by the Green movement have failed to protect the environment, and have impoverished millions in the process.

A dose of reality on climate change

Britain’s Department of Health says we face killer heatwaves and the Royal College of Physicians president says "the effects of global warming on health could eclipse those of smoking, alcohol and obesity." But more people in the UK routinely die of cold than of heat. And the cure for so-called tropical diseases is not cool temperatures but prosperity.

Protectionism harms consumers and the environment

Proposals to restrict imports from countries which do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions are simply protectionism. They would decrease world trade, disproportionately harming poorer countries, and favour the status quo by rewarding inefficient producers and thus delaying the adoption of cleaner, resource-saving technologies.

World trade begins at home

The rhetoric about who is to blame for failing to conclude trade agreements between Europe and Africa obscures a far more important point: Africa is never going to get rich while its governments restrict trade between its own countries, EU deals or not.

Hot air and human health

The WHO has overstated the health implications of climate change in order to call for strict caps on carbon emissions. By undermining economic growth, this would have very serious consequences for health in developing countries.

Adaptation not emissions cuts is policymakers' best approach

Current climate change talks in Bali are focussing on a "Kyoto-2" with global caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. But such a treaty would harm the poor, hampering their adaptability to climate change, while doing little to prevent it.

WHO's got its facts wrong?

The World Health Organisation makes great sport of taking the pharmaceutical industry to task for its inability to provide everyone in the developing world with the drugs they need. This so-called market failure is being used at negotiations in Geneva this month to bring research and patents under official control, managed by the WHO--but the WHO has trouble managing itself.