Health equity in a globalising world : the importance of human rights.

At the start of the century, the proposition that globalisation might endanger health had gained limited acceptance. It was claimed in 2001 that ‘globalisation is good for your health, mostly’, based on a simplistic analysis in which increased trade was presumed to lead to faster economic growth and, consequently, better health (Feachem, 2001). Today, after the 2008 financial crisis and in the context of growing awareness of the importance of social determinants of health (Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2008), recognition of the importance of globalisation for health equity has moved into the mainstream. The Lancet Commission on Global Governance for Health (Ottersen et al., 2014) began its report by noting that: ‘With globalisation, health inequity increasingly results from transnational activities that involve actors with different interests and degrees of power.