ABSTRACT
The global health governance challenges that were identified at the beginning of the new century remain ahead of us, possibly even exacerbated. The World Health Organization’s constitutional role of coordinating and directing authority is increasingly at stake. It would seem that the Organization no longer has the credibility and the support needed to fulfill that mandate. The resources made available in the context of development assistance for health have increased enormously. The post-World War II governance system was rooted in the UN as a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of their common ends and was based on international law. The “outbreak narrative” following the emergence of HIV/AIDS, and in general the emergence or re-emergence of acute and severe infectious diseases outbreaks, has prompted security concerns since the early 1990s. The evidence-based biomedical frame views health as a technical problem to which factual evidence leading to the identification of “magic bullets” provides the response.
