it is essential to use incremental cost-effectiveness ratios if the objective – to maximise healthcare effects given the resources available – is to be achieved.

Individual health analysis from this perspective focuses on the demand and supply of health. The demand for health care is a derived demand from the demand for health, more generally. Health care is demanded as a means for consumers to achieve a larger stock of "health capital." The demand for health is unique, because individuals allocate resources in order to both consume and produce health.The optimal level of investment in health occurs where the marginal cost of health capital is equal to the marginal benefit resulting from it (MC=MB). With the passing of time, health depreciates at some rate d. The general interest rate in the economy is denoted by r. Supply of health focuses on provider incentives, market creation, market organization, issues related to information assymetries, the role of NGOs and governments in health provision.Another approach, embraced by ethicists and bioethicists, emphasizes distributional considerations. For example, the Rule of Rescue is a rule coined by A.R. Jonsen in 1986 that is currently used in a variety of bioethics contexts.


The rule of rescue rule specifies that it is 'a perceived duty to save endangered life where possible' (Bochner et al, 1994, pp901) Recent bioethics research examines what kinds of international obligations of justice exist broadly clustered in three areas: (1) When Are International Inequalities in Health Unjust?; (2) Where Do International Health Inequalities Come From?; (3) How do we meet health needs justly if we can't meet them all?A third approach emphasizes political economy considerations applied to global health. Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Originating in moral philosophy (e.g. Adam Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow), political economy of health is the study of how economies of states — polities, hence political economy - influence aggregate population health outcomes.


Global Health Measurement:Analysis of global health hinges on how to measure health burden internationally. Several measures exist: DALY, QALY, DFLEs and mortality measurements. Life Expectancy:Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average life span (average length of survival) of a specified population. It most often refers to the expected age to be reached before death for a given human population (by nation, by current age, or by other demographic variables). Life expectancy may also refer to the expected time remaining to live, and that too can be calculated for any age or for any group. Disability Adjusted Life Years:The disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) is a summary measure that combines the impact of illness, disability and mortality on population health. The DALY combines in one measure the time lived with disability and the time lost due to premature mortality. One DALY can be thought of as one lost year of ‘healthy’ life and the burden of disease as a measurement of the gap between current health status and an ideal situation where everyone lives into old age free of disease and disability.

Global Health

Global health is a field at the intersection of several social science disciplines--demography, economics, epidemiology, political economy and sociology. It focuses on determinants and distribution of health in international contexts. The term global health comprises consideration of population health in a global context and above the concerns or perspectives of particular nations, including the rise in importance of actors beyond governmental or intergovernmental organisations and agencies. A definition that captures modern global health is that of Global Health Initiative: "Global health refers to health problems that transcend national borders—problems such as infectious and insect-borne diseases that can spread from one country to another. It also includes health problems that are of such magnitude that they have a global political and economic impact."Examples of global health issues include international law (and its effect on health systems), global warming (and the implications for population health), globalization and health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), among many others.

History:In 1948, the member states of the newly formed United Nations gathered together to create the World Health Organization. A cholera epidemic that took 20,000 lives in Egypt in 1947 and 1948 helped spur the international community to action.One of the greatest accomplishments of the international health community since then was the eradication of smallpox. The last naturally occurring case of the infection was recorded in 1977. But in a strange way, success with smallpox bred overconfidence and subsequent efforts to eradicate malaria and other diseases have not been as effective. Indeed, there is now debate within the global health community as to whether eradication campaigns should be abandoned in favor of less costly and perhaps more effective primary health and containment programs.For a variety of reasons, fewer resources were made available for global health in the late 1970s and 1980s—just at the moment when the AIDS virus was beginning its worldwide spread.

The beginning of the 21st century, however, saw renewed interest, particularly after Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates started spending billions of dollars on international health initiatives and research. Disciplinary Perspectives On Global Health:Epidemiology, economics, demography, ethicists and political economists study global health issues.A primary perspective emphasizes the cost-effectiveness and cost benefit approaches for both individual and population health allocation. Aggregate analysis from the perspective of governments, NGOs and Foundations for global health allocation focuses on the use of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis for the health sector. Cost-effectiveness analysis compares the costs and health effects of an intervention to assess whether health investments are worthwhile from economic perspective. It is necessary to distinguish between independent interventions and mutually exclusive interventions. For independent interventions, average cost-effectiveness ratios suffice, but for mutually exclusive interventions