A Shot of Justice Priority-Setting for Addressing Child Mortality

Child mortality has been widely perceived and addressed as a medical issue. Regardless of the fact that there has been a substantial decrease in child mortality world-wide it continues to be a concern in developing countries. Millions of children die each year due to preventable causes. This book argues that there is a clear and consistent pattern of preventable child deaths, which is, at its core, a problem of justice. Modern theories of justice can offer important lessons for the design and assessment of child survival policies from an equity perspective. The book considers Amartya Sen's multifocal metric of justice as more plausible than its Rawlsian or resourcist counterparts. It argues that such an approach to justice is relevant for affirmative action policies, which have long been a source of resentment among historically better-off groups around the world, especially in two of the world's largest and most vibrant democracies-India and the United States.

Dr Ali Mehdi is a Senior Fellow at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER), a premier policy research institution based in New Delhi. He established the Health Policy Initiative at ICRIER in 2014 (www.icrier-health.org ) and has been leading it since. He has more than 13 years of experience in health policy analysis and has worked on a broad range of issues - the process, design and analytical frame of health policies; surveillance and prevention of chronic diseases, along with the policy instruments and institutional design for health promotion; social determinants of health; the metrics and measurement of health inequities; health sector financing, governance, education and manpower; fertility and mortality; demographic dividend; drug regulation and pharmaceutical pricing and innovation, antimicrobial resistance, etc. He was a member of the T20 process of the G20 during the German Presidency in 2017 and is currently developing the Government of India's potential position in the G20 on health as part of ICRIER's G20 engagement with Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. Among his recent health publications are - a forthcoming edited volume tentatively titled, Health of the Nation: India Health Report (Oxford University Press 2019), International cooperation for registration of medicines: Opportunities for India, Challenges and prospects for clinical trials in India: A regulatory perspective (Academic Foundation 2017) and a journal paper, Chronic disease in India (special issue of Global Heart, 11:4). He also writes columns in leading Indian newspapers on critical health issues. Ali also established and led the World-Bank funded Jobs and Development project at ICRIER in 2014 (www.icrier-jobs.org ), and engaged in a number of research and dissemination activities as part of this project. As part of his jobs research, he co-authored a recently released book, F