Developing global public health links

The “short twentieth century”, as defined by Eric Hobsbawm in 1995, was marked by important economic, social, and technical-scientific advances that improved the quality of life and health for millions of people around the world. However, as an “age of extremes’—a phrase also coined by Hobsbawm—the process of globalization began to create not only large international disparities, but also huge social and health problems, especially in countries excluded from the central axes of the global economy.