ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical assessment of the actual and potential contributions of an emergent powerful actor in global health governance, the G8. It focuses on three G8 summits: Okinawa, Japan, Genoa, Italy, and Kananaskis, Canada. Although Okinawa and Genoa catalysed the establishment of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria as a public-private partnership, the G8's commitment to global health governance must nonetheless align with existing global health mechanisms in mutually reinforcing ways to diminish human vulnerability to disease globally. The chapter explores the relationship between the G8 and the emerging trends at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enable developing countries to use the flexibility of the WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to maximise access to essential medicines for prevailing diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis (TB). Genuine pursuit of policy coherence and sustainability in global health governance will likely transform the G8 summit commitments from rhetorical to humane diplomacy.
