17 - IIASA Conference '07 on Global Development - 14-15 November 2007

Landis MacKellar

Health and Global Development: Trends and Uncertainties,
Challenges and Responses

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Lecture Summary

A “business as usual” extrapolation of global income growth and rising educational attainment, together with improved medical technologies, shows more healthy life years for all. As the burden of disease will be due to non-communicable disease rather than infections, demand for care, resulting from disability and chronic conditions, will likely increase. Wealthy countries are already claiming many human resources for health needed in poor countries, and pressures can only increase. Climate change and emergent infectious diseases, such as pandemic influenza, will most likely impose resource constraints on the health sector. Dr. Landis MacKellar, leader of IIASA’s Health and Global Change Project, argues that the scientific arsenal to cope with such deadly events is strikingly more developed than the institutional and political response. His review concludes with a review of donor priorities in the poorest countries, especially HIV/AIDS.

Speaker Biography

Landis MacKellar is an economist specializing in economic demography. His research has covered population and development, population and the environment and, most recently, the economics of population aging. Since 2006, he has been leader of IIASA's Health and Global Change Project.

Dr. MacKellar holds M.A. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an M.Sc from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Prior to joining IIASA in 1994, he worked for the International Labour Organization in Geneva and Africa and was Assistant Professor of Economics at Queens College of the City University of New York and an economist at Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates.

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Last updated: 24 Feb 2011