February 2011

Theme: Building bridges between public health and international relations.

Lecturer: Henri Jouval
International Advisor of the International Relations Center in Health, Fiocruz (Cris/Fiocruz)
Presentation of the lecturer

Moderator: Eiiti Sato
Director of the Institute of International Relations (Irel/UnB)

Summary

Dr. Henri Jouval Jr. (Fiocruz) presented the relationship between the fields of public health and international relations, especially with regard to the topic of international cooperation. Initially, the lecturer presented historical background of border protection, trade control and the quarantine institute episodes. The history demonstrates that health has been included, for a long time, somehow, on the international agenda. More recently, in the face of the phenomena of globalization and regionalism, the sanitary issues have been related more closely with international trade issues and human rights. Along with the expansion of the importance of health as an international issue, one can see the emergence of the model of South-South cooperation and triangular cooperation, which have embraced the theme of health. In his conclusions, Dr. Jouval Jr. presented issues which are shown on the contemporary reality of cooperation in health. Finally, the lecture of Dr. Jouval Jr. was important precisely because it not only presented the theme, but also advanced prospectively to proposed fundamental questions for the future of South-South cooperation on health and to the relationship between the fields of public health and international relations. In this sense, his participation in the activities of NETHIS contributes immensely to the densification of the reflection around the area of intersection between the fields of public health and of South-South cooperation – two structuring axes that, along with the field of bioethics, comprise the scientific scope of NETHIS.
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