Global Health Law Research Guide

Public health intersects with international trade in various ways—see, for example, cross-border health services, food safety, intellectual property and pharmaceuticals, etc. The World Trade Organization maintains a considerable amount of information regarding trade and public health.

• Though now somewhat dated, the 2002 report WTO Agreements and Public Health: A Joint Study by the WHO and WTO Secretariat provides an overview of how trade agreements relate to health as well as discussions of global issues affecting health such as infectious diseases, access to medicine, the environment, and food security.
• The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures page includes background information related to food safety and animal and plant health regulations, with links to documents including the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.
• The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights page includes general information about TRIPS as well as pages specifically about its relationship to public health and pharmaceutical patents. WHO, WIPO, and the WTO issued the 2012 report Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections Between Public Health, Intellectual Property and Trade. The page also includes a section devoted to TRIPS texts; the current text of the agreement as amended is available here.
• The Services trade page includes information on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as well as the text of the agreement itself. Trade in health services is included under GATS.