The Global Health Watch

PLoS Medicine: The Global Health Watch
Mike Rowson*, David McCoy, Amit Sen Gupta, Armando de Negri Filho
At the World Health Assembly in May 2003, three civil society groups—the People's Health Movement, the Global Equity Gauge Alliance, and Medact—discussed the need for civil society to produce its own alternative to the World Health Organisation's World Health Report. We felt strongly that we needed to produce a global health report that had equity and the right to health at its heart. We also needed a way to monitor the performance of global health institutions themselves. The idea of an alternative to the World Health Report has developed into an initiative called the Global Health Watch, which we are launching next year.
The Three Key Players

Medact (http://www.medact.org) is a United Kingdom–based global health charity, undertaking education, research, and advocacy on conflict, poverty, and the environment.

The Global Equity Gauge Alliance (http://www.gega.org.za) was created to participate in and support an active approach to monitoring health inequalities and promoting equity within and between societies. The Alliance currently includes 11 member-teams, called Equity Gauges, located in ten countries in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

The People's Health Movement (http://www.phmovement.org) is a global network of activists, organisations, and social movements. Its goal is to re-establish health and equitable development as top priorities in local, national, and international policy-making, with comprehensive primary health care as the strategy to achieve these priorities.