In an increasingly integrated, globalised world with new cross-border threats to health, widening disparities in both health and access to health care, and an unacceptable level of human suffering and premature mortality in developing countries, civil society actors are asking, why is so little progress being made by global health actors?

Like its critically acclaimed predecessor, the second edition of Global Health Watch covers a comprehensive range of topics, including access to medicines, mental health, water and sanitation, nutrition, and war and conflict. Unlike other reports on global health, it also draws attention to the politics of global health and the policies and actions of key actors.

Global Health Watch 2 includes chapters on the United States foreign assistance programme, the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Global Health Watch 2 is not only an educational resource for health professionals and activists, it also makes clear the need for global health advocates to engage in lobbying many key actors to do better and to do more, whilst resisting those that do harm.

Global Health Watch is a collaboration of leading popular movements and nongovernmental organizations comprising civil society activists, community groups, health workers and academics. It has compiled this alternative world health report - a hard-hitting, evidence-based analysis of the political economy of health and health care - as a challenge to the major global bodies that influence health. Its monitoring of institutions including the World Bank, the World Health Organization and UNICEF reveals that while some important initiatives are being taken, much more needs to be done to have any hope of meeting the UN's health-related Millennium Development Goals.