ABSTRACT
The dominance of issues such asHIV/AIDS and pandemic flu has for some led to the exclusion or neglect of other diseases and health priorities. Funding strategies that prioritize key health concerns ignore or skew the global health agenda away from common neglected tropical diseases that affect the most disadvantaged within society as well as broader health interventions such as the building of health centers and transportation routes. Neglected tropical diseases have become a category in their own right and have secured greater relevance and funding from private partnerships and foundations in recent years. However, narrowing neglect to specific diseases ignores the wide array of health concerns and strategies that one would assume to be at the core of global health governance. Thus the focus of this chapter is not only on neglected tropical diseases but neglected health more broadly. The chapter characterizes neglected health as those issues that are sidelined or ignored in favor of global prioritizing around specific issues, diseases, or agendas within global health governance. Two dominant areas of neglected health that are gaining wider attention have been health system strengthening and maternal health. Health system strengthening has been a core part of the governance of specific diseases but has been sidelined as a central strategy for good global health governance. Despite being included within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), up until 2010, maternal health has been ignored or bounded within categories of maternalchild-health-HIV. This chapter outlines how these issues have become neglected and the implications of neglecting, sidelining, and shifting between health issues for the long-term promotion of better health for all.
