Blue Marble Health

An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor amid Wealth

Peter J. Hotez

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781421420479
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Policy

Why do diseases of poverty afflict more people in wealthy countries than in the developing world?

In 2011, Dr. Peter J. Hotez relocated to Houston to launch Baylor's National School of Tropical Medicine. He was shocked to discover that a number of neglected diseases often associated with developing countries were widespread in impoverished Texas communities. Despite the United States' economic prowess and first-world status, an estimated 12 million Americans living at the poverty level currently suffer from at least one neglected tropical disease, or NTD. Hotez concluded that the world's neglected diseases—which include tuberculosis, hookworm infection, lymphatic filariasis, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis—are born first and foremost of extreme poverty.

In this book, Hotez describes a new global paradigm known as "blue marble health," through which he asserts that poor people living in wealthy countries account for most of the world's poverty-related illness. He explores the current state of neglected diseases in such disparate countries as Mexico, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Nigeria. By crafting public policy and relying on global partnerships to control or eliminate some of the world's worst poverty-related illnesses, Hotez believes, it is possible to eliminate life-threatening disease while at the same time creating unprecedented opportunities for science and diplomacy.

Clear, compassionate, and timely, Blue Marble Health is a must-read for leaders in global health, tropical medicine, and international development, along with anyone committed to helping the millions of people who are caught in the desperate cycle of poverty and disease.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A Changing Landscape in Global Health
• 2 The “Other Diseases“
• 3 Introducing Blue Marble Health
• 4 East Asia: China, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea
• 5 India
• 6 Sub-Saharan Africa
• 7 Saudi Arabia and Neighboring Conflict Zones of the Middle East and North African Region
• 8 The Americas
• 9 Australia, Canada, European Union, Russian Federation, and Turkey
• 10 United States of America
• 11 The G20
• 12 A Framework for Science and Vaccine Diplomacy
• 13 Future Directions
• Literature Cited
• Index
• About the Author