Global Health Is Political; Can It Also Be Compassionate?

One would think that global health, as “trans-national research and action for promoting health for all”, should be rooted in the compassionate desire to alleviate suffering. Yet, its current operationalisation has been criticised for bureaucratising action into addressing technical (rather than moral) problems. This bureaucratisation doesn’t help global health researchers and practitioners resist a natural sense of disconnect with people living in very distant places. As Addis noted, compassionate responses to global health issues both require recognising suffering as such and demand purposeful action. Ethical questions for compassionate global health practitioners then become: how do we identify (as opposed to assume) people’s suffering, and what should we do to alleviate it, without making it worse?