Today’s global health crisis reflects widening inequalities within and between countries. As the rich get rich and the poor get poorer, advances in science and technology are securing better and longer lives for a small fraction of the world’s population. Meanwhile children die of diarrhoea for want of clean water, people with AIDS die for want of affordable medicines, and people in all regions are increasingly cut off from the political, social and economic tools they can use to create their own health and well-being.

Global Health Watch 1 (2005-2006) is a collaboration of public health experts, non-governmental organizations, community groups, health workers and academics. It presents a hard-hitting assessment of inequalities in health and health care – and is aimed at challenging the major institutions, such as the World Health Organization, that influence health.

The Watch is divided into five thematic sections. This executive summary highlights some of the major points made in each of these sections, and supplements them with recommendations made in the accompanying advocacy document, Global Health Action .