Srividhya Ragavan

The decades of applying stopgap solutions to the existing tensions between international trade and intellectual-property systems, on the one hand, and public health, on the other, has led to systemic fractures affecting global public health. These fractures and failures manifested just as the world was struggling to appropriately respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. The post-Covid reality is that public-health failures can break supply chains and can result in quickly bringing trade to a halt. While much has been written about these tensions generally, most attempts at reconciling the two sides have been divisive. This book advocates a holistic reimagining of the relationship between them. It asserts that optimizing trade and innovation necessitates recalibrating policies that implicate global public health in order to enhance access. Thus, it advocates for establishing a set of viable policies that can reposition the role of health in offering a reimagined way forward, within an alternative framework placing public health as the fulcrum of global trade. The first five chapters expound common platforms for tapping into the synergies that connect trade and intellectual property rights with public health as the way forward; the final chapter (re)imagines public health as the fulcrum of global trade by advocating for an instrument that focuses on public health as a mechanism for improving trade and development.