In the same way that
one’s daily life is dependent on private goods such as a
car, clothes or bread, it also depends on public goods such as
roads, an education system, and a law and order regime. As we
usually don’t go to the store to acquire these public goods,
their provision is often taken for granted. However, their
production process has become more complex in the past decades
because these public goods have gone global. Today the quality
of health services offered to a citizen in the village of a
given country depends not only on the quality and efficiency
of that country’s national healthcare and medical research
system. It also depends on, among others, the intellectual
property rights regime that influences the rules of access to
medicine, the physical linkages across countries that enable
infectious diseases to cross borders (see the west Nile virus
in the US for instance), and the potential for some
traditional medicines unknown outside of indigenous
communities of developing countries.
Public goods that matter to each of us,
such as the control of communicable diseases, have now become
global public goods. Clearly, the nature and quality of the
provision of these goods are a matter of personal concern as
well.
