Course Outline:
Case 1 (‘Differences between countries’) is intended to give you an impression of how different countries in different circumstances have developed their health potentials. To see such changes over time you will use the World Health Chart. One inevitable reflex in looking at differences between countries is that you would want to compare them. Such a comparison, and a ranking of countries, is exactly what WHO has done in its 2000 World Health Report. In the second part of the case you will study the legitimacy and validity of such comparisons.
Case 2 (‘Making a healthy world: institutions’) will hopefully stimulate you to start thinking about how different organisations (or organisational formats) have an influence on world health.
Case 3 (‘Global Change and Human Health’) introduces you to the thinking of scientists that have been studying the future of our world, and the impact of any projected change on our health. The case itself presents material about climate change, but of course climate change cannot be separated from industrial, trade, and social development.
Case 4 (‘The Shrine of PHC’) focuses on the efforts of WHO and UNICEF to create and deliver affordable, acceptable, and effective health services (in their broadest sense) to all the world.
Case 5 (‘Macro-economics and Global Health’) gives you a first introduction to a more recent effort of WHO: to mobilise sufficient resources for global health. Although the case is not specifically dealing with macro-economics, the idea is that you will appreciate global economic patterns, and the possibilities we have to invest adequate resources in health.
‘The European Public Health Mandate’ (case 6) gives you a chance to discover the increasing role the European Union is taking on in the area of public health.
Case 7 (‘WTO, GATT and GPPPs’) intends to start you thinking, and studying, about the question how global trade is good or bad for global health.
In case 8 (‘Global Epidemics (I): cholera’) we encounter our first disease of global significance. The case could have dealt with other epidemics that have spanned the globe and that at first sight seem more thrilling: the plague epidemics of the Middle Ages, or the annual influenza epidemics (with its famed Spanish influenza killing an estimated 18 million nearly a century ago). But a review of the current cholera epidemics will add an extra dimension.
Following the previous case, in case 9 (‘Global epidemics (II): from Grethe Rask to ‘the gay cancer’ to ‘the scourge of Africa’) the most ravaging epidemic of modern times is presented: HIV/AIDS.
Finally, in the longest case of this module (‘After the eradication of smallpox: poliomyelitis and malaria to follow?’) we will look at one of the world’s greatest accomplishments of the 20th century: the eradication of smallpox. Why has it been possible to get rid of this disease? Can the feat be repeated with other diseases? Two diseases high on the WHO agenda today should be discussed.

Entry Requirements:
available to students studying the Bachelor in Public Health at University of Southern Denmark

URL:
http://www.publichealth.sdu.dk/

Contact:
+45 6550 4115
info.publichealth@health.sdu.dk