Soft Law and Global Health Problems
Lessons from Responses to HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis

A legal examination of global health governance issues relating to access to essential medicines for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Sharifah Sekalala (Author)

9781107049529, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 May 2017

250 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.62 kg

'In her impressive monograph Soft Law and Global Health Problems, Sharifah Sekalala offers an innovative and meticulously argued legal perspective on the struggle over intellectual property and access to essential medicines in the global south.' John Harrington, Social and Legal Studies

Various legal approaches have been taken internationally to improve global access to essential medicines for people in developing countries. This book focuses on the millions of people suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Beginning with the AIDS campaign for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, Sharifah Sekalala argues that a soft law approach is more effective than hard law by critiquing the current TRIPS flexibilities within the World Trade Organization. She then considers how soft law has also been instrumental in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis. Using these compelling case studies, this book explores lawmaking on global health and analyses the viability of current global health financing trends within new and traditional organisations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNITAID and The Global Fund. This book is essential reading for legal, development, policy and health scholars, activists and policymakers working across political economy, policy studies and global health studies.

1. Framing international legal responses to global health
2. Hard law and soft law in the global context
3. Hard law and access to ARVs: examining intellectual property rights
4. Hard law and access to ARVs: examining the right to health
5. The soft approach: the Doha Declaration on Public Health
6. The soft approach: greater access to ARVs within the United Nations
7. Examining soft law in action: the 3 by 5 initiative and The Global Fund
8. The case of tuberculosis and malaria
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM], International human rights law [LBBR], Law [L]