Global health, planetary health, One Health: conceptual and ethical challenges and concerns

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically shown the level of interconnectedness of the human population, the direct relation between human health and the ecosystem, as well as the enormous ethical challenges required for a global response. Relatedly, society has been directly confronted by issues of ‘Global health,’ both in terms of awareness of health conditions and health systems resiliency all around the world, as well as in terms of governance of the worldwide response and its implications at national and local levels. While Global health is often used as a cosmetic label for neocolonial approaches, it is really an interdisciplinary approach consisting of the interaction between globalization and the determinants of health. Thus, it involves the ecosystem and its transformation and implies a systemic ‘One Health’ decolonized approach in the definition of its strategies. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the inequities and the limits of the current hegemonic Global health system governance; calling for ethics to provide a renewed, comprehensive, inclusive, and decolonized conceptualization of Global health.