October 19, 2024

Power, Injustice & Exploitation are Key Elements of Global Health Colonialism

David McCoy, Anuj Kapilashrami and co-authors argue in the Bulletin of the WHO that an agenda for decolonization among global health practitioners must address the corporate and financialized power, injustice, exploitation, wealth extraction and profiteering that is widespread today.  They present a three-part decolonization agenda for action to: 1) address the power asymmetries between global health actors from high-income & privileged countries and their counterparts in low-income and marginalized settings; 2) address colonization by the institutions, structures and systems of global health governance; and 3) address colonialism through the economics of the global health system itself. Their call for political and economic anti-colonialism as well as social decolonization is aimed at ensuring greater national, racial, cultural and knowledge diversity within the structures of global health.

McCoy D, Kapilashrami A, Kumar R, Rhule E, Khosla R. Developing an agenda for the decolonization of global health. Bull World Health Organ. 2024 Feb 1;102(2):130-136. doi: 10.2471/BLT.23.289949. Epub 2023 Dec 8. PMID: 38313156; PMCID: PMC10835633.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10835633/