Over the past century, hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in programs aimed at improving health on a global scale. Given the enormous scale and complexity of these lifesaving operations, why do millions of people in low-income countries continue to live without access to basic health services, sanitation, or clean water? And why are deadly diseases like Ebola able to spread so quickly among populations? In A History of Global Health, Randall M. Packard argues that global-health initiatives have saved millions of lives but have had limited impact on the overall health of people living in underdeveloped areas, where health-care workers are poorly paid, infrastructure and basic supplies such as disposable gloves, syringes, and bandages are lacking, and little effort has been made to address the underlying social and economic determinants of ill health. Global-health campaigns have relied on the application of biomedical technologies-vaccines, insecticide-treated nets, vitamin A capsules-to attack specific health problems but have failed to invest in building lasting infrastructure for managing the ongoing health problems of local populations. Designed to be read and taught, the book offers a critical historical view, providing historians, policy makers, researchers, program managers, and students with an essential new perspective on the formation and implementation of global-health policies and practices.

During the past 50 years, colonial empires around the world have collapsed and vast areas that were once known as "colonies" have become known as "less developed countries" or "the third world." The idea of development - and the relationship it implies between industrialized, affluent nations and poor, emerging nations - has become the key to a new conceptual framework. Development has also become a vast industry, involving billions of dollars, and a worldwide community of experts. These essays - written by scholars in many fields - examine the production, transmission, and implementation of ideas about development within historical, political and intellectual contexts, emphasizing the changing meanings of development over the past 50 years. The concept of development has come under attack in recent years both from those who see development as the imperialism of knowledge, imposing on the world a modernity that it does not neccessarily want, and those who see development efforts as a distortion of the world market. These essays look beyond the polemics and focus on the diverse, contested, and changing meanings of development among social movements, national governments, internation

"After reading this book, no one should fail to see tuberculosis in South Africa in the light of social policies and interests which have prevented its control. In turn, it shows tuberculosis to be one measure of the cost in suffering of the emergence of a modern capitalist society in South Africa."--Rodney Ehrlich, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York

"At almost every point, the author has something fresh to say about previous analyses of the origins, nature and spread of the disease. His subtle exposition of the ideological interpretations of the medical profession--from their adherence to a 'virgin soil' theory to more recent notions of relating to the social and biological aetiology of the disease--is particularly original and thought-provoking. . . . Well researched, effectively organised, and wholly readable."--Shula Marks, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London