Our panel address the legacy of colonialism within international health systems and ask: what is the relationship between histories of imperialism and health, development and human rights? How can international institutions be reformed to overturn the global North’s dominance in health programming? How might new funding arrangements that empower global South infrastructures affect the public health agenda?
The pandemic offers an opportunity to critically appraise the current state of global health and its governance structures. In disrupting health systems across the globe, it held a magnifying glass to the way colonial legacies shape the geopolitics of health responses, including power relations between different countries and international organisations. Here we discuss global, regional and local systems of oppression, what decolonisation means in global health, and offer integrative approaches to global health research, policy and practice.
