Equity As a Public Good

Health and illness because of their intrinsic externalities differ from other goods and services which normally categorized as private or luxuries goods. This characteristic highlights social and global nature of health and illness.

Health and illness where considered within these boarders but today the globalization of the world has pushed health and illness issues much far from than individual and national issues. In fact health and illness is a social and global problem.

To meet health needs of human population as the major goal of all activities collective measures should be taken. This is because of their collective nature and because of their broad field of activity, over the world, dealing universally with them seems to be necessary. Development of WHO, was a good starting point in concerning health and illness as a global problem.

Equality has different and sometimes contradictory definitions. In health areas, it focuses on gaps reductions and providing access to populations. Access to health care services, physically and financially, particularly with regard to infectious diseases without governments and international institutions seems to be impossible.

Equity as a multifaceted phenomenon should include all areas similar to health which may be characterized as public goods and certain externalities. Global development has to pursue gap reduction between poor and rich, between developed and underdeveloped countries and areas such as health, power, leisure and education.

Several experiments have proved economic gap reduction, equitable income distribution, and humanitarian policies of egalitarian states. Therefore, despite the fact that governments try to be squeezed in different areas, their efficiency on providing welfare for their populations and their concentrated responsibility on issues such as equity in health, environment and inequity reduction or even eradication remains as inevitable necessity.

Keywords: Equity, Public goods, Poverty, Global development

Word count: 291