But I can hear some of you saying “yes but we already have a strategy, a committee or a policy within our health ministry to deal with inequity”. I know that, but nearly always they miss the mark. They consider behavioural risk factors, look at poverty reduction strategies or at increasing access to healthcare services. Yet the evidence indicates that the reasons inequities continue to exist is because of excess wealth and a world trading system that continues to perpetuate inequities. Oh dear! Have you stopped reading? Are you wondering why a professor of public health might be bothered about world trade rather than curing disease. Well it is because I’m convinced that unless we can tackle the issue of excess wealth and create a fair trading system then the future will not be very healthy. So often when we consider health inequities we assume that poverty or the poor are the problem. The number of poor people is growing in your country and the gaps between them and the most wealthy is increasing, unless you are from one of the very few countries where this is not the case. Globally 800 million people in the world are malnourished and 30 million die from hunger each year. I know you don’t have to bother about winning their votes but don’t you care about them none the less? It is true that as a national politician you have less power than in the past. Transnational corporations are becoming ever more powerful. Walmart, owned by the Walton family in the United States has an estimated wealth of $27 billion, which is higher than the GDP of Bangladesh with its population of 120 billion.

So, you say, what has all this got to do with health? A lot. The position of transnational corporations is maintained because everywhere national governments bend over backwards to accommodate them and the impositions of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The Structural Adjustment Policies or neo-liberal policies of the past years have cut vital health and education services. Privatisation of