In 2003 the People's Health Movement, the Global Equity Gauge Alliance and Medact came together to plan a review of the performance of the very institutions that normally write global reports. To turn the tables by reporting and assessing the actions of international health agencies such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank. It was time to produce an alternative world health report that would highlight the root causes of poor health and reveal the gap between humanitarian rhetoric and reality.

This book presents a challenge to the major global bodies that influence health. The real scandal, it argues, is that the world lacks neither funds nor expertise to solve most of these problems. It is the predominance of conservative thinking and neoliberal economics that has led these institutions, established to promote social justice, into imposing policies and practices that, despite some important initiatives, are actually blocking any hope of meeting the UN's health-related Millennium Development Goals.