Edinburgh Napier University

  Blog: Professor Martin McKee, President of the European Public Health Association and Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Tropical Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, opened the plenary session at the first day of the 2014 Global Health Forum in Taiwan. Introducing the resurgence of the term the ‘political economy’ of health Professor McKee outlined how important political relationships can influence the allocation of many health resources and indeed our health. He alluded to the historical foundations of this term that stem from the German pathologist Rudolph Virchow who said “politics is nothing but medicine at a larger scale”. Dr Virchow was referring to the political aristocracy at the time, who in the 1840’s were partly responsible for the outbreak of typhus in the Upper Silesia region of Poland.