Many people believe that death is one of the worst things that can happen to us. At the same time, the incident of death cannot be experienced. This raises philosophical questions about how and to whom death is bad. Is death negative primarily for the survivors, or does death also affect the decedent? And when is the worst time to die? Is it late in fetal life, just after birth, or in adolescence? In order to properly evaluate deaths in global health, we must provide answers to these questions. In this volume, leading philosophers, medical doctors, and health economists discuss different views on how to evaluate deaths and the relevance of such evaluations to health policy. These include state-of-the-art theories about the harm of death and its connections to population-level bioethics. The standard view in global health is that newborn deaths count as the worst deaths, while stillbirths are neglected. This raises a question about why birth is so significant. Several of the book’s authors challenge this standard view. This is the first volume to connect philosophical discussions on the harm of death with discussions on population health. The results from the book will change the way we evaluate deaths in global health. If we do change how deaths are evaluated, this will have consequences for how we prioritize different health programs that affect individuals at different ages, as well as how we think about inequality in health.
Disentangling the efficiency drivers in country-level global health programs: An empirical study
