Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

16 South” (Fernández et al., 2014), following the dynamics of the periphery in Latin America and East Asia. In this arena of ideological and scientific struggle, this book on global health from Universidad de Chile, Global Health, the Current Scenario, and Future Perspectives introduces us to a new intellectual debate, affirming the idea that “global health is more relevant than ever.” Global health issues present a challenge and must be addressed with a renewed vision of global public health, beyond health problems specific to national and interstate spaces. This is a key approach in the current debate on the relevance of global health, especially when some believed that discussing global health was pointless in the face of the crisis of globalization. Thus, as this book begins, it is useful to highlight the most pressing issues in the world of global health with reasoned arguments and supported evidence. Certain issues have made us think about the health perspective, following these ideological considerations: global geopolitical tensions, including war and violence; the COVID-19 pandemic; the rise of emerging and re-emerging diseases; accelerated climate change with unforeseen effects on the environment, human health and the planet; inequities and social injustice; regional and local asymmetries blurred in the global order; the phenomenon of migration and forced displacement within and between countries; the ineffectiveness of global diplomacy and the shortcomings of multilateralism. Global institutional mechanisms and governance arrangements between states and other transnational actors are responsible for this framework of global injustice. They contribute to the deterioration of living conditions and the violation of citizens' rights globally, as well as determining the health of populations in countries, regions, and localities worldwide. This outline analysis does not aim to be exhaustive, since that is the task of the book. However, it serves as a framework for the main global problems in the contemporary world two decades into the 21st century. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised the issue of global health to a new level, as stated by Rodríguez, Fanjul, and Vilasanjuan (2022). “The most predictable of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are related to the importance acquired by global health on the international agenda and the transformation of the global health system”. As a corollary of the pandemic, global health is acknowledged as a primordial political issue, given the limitations of governance and of great interest to global geopolitics. In this regard, global health diplomacy has been hindered by the crisis of multilateralism, as denounced by Kickbusch, Kökény, Kazatchkine, and Karaman (2021), considering the difficulties in addressing the COVID- 19 pandemic due to national egoisms, geopolitical games, and nationalism