Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

294 Like many hurricanes, Hurricane Mitch originated in Africa as a tropical wave and entered the Atlantic Ocean on October 10 th , 1998. Upon entering the Caribbean, it quickly developed into a tropical storm. To understand the catastrophe it caused, one only needs to read one of the headlines commemorating its occurrence after 20 years: “The hurricane that wiped out Central America” (Olmos,2018). Hurricane Mitch has been one of the most powerful and deadly tropical cyclones seen in modern times. It reached speeds of up to 290 km/h and quickly reached the most destructive category on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. The result? 15,000 deaths, 8,000 missing persons and 2 million refugees. Material damages amounted to 5 billion dollars (IDB, 2004). Furthermore, disease outbreaks occurred after its passage throughout Central America, including diseases like cholera, leptospirosis and dengue (IDB, 2004). Now then, from an international perspective, Hurricane Mitch forced the Inter-American Development Bank to redefine its policies on extreme emergencies and global disasters: no less than 11 countries had fallen into default. On that occasion, the author of these pages was invited to propose a Disaster Network for the Bank, which quickly became a call addressed to all member countries. Thus, at the end of 2000, Chile presided over the Disaster Network, where global issues for disaster reduction were examined such as climate change, education, marginality and poverty (as well as other issues related to the bank’s credit policy, emergency funds and investment in prevention) (IDB, n.d.). Final conclusions This brief review shows countless examples of innovative efforts made by many individuals and expressed through new institutions, international collaboration, technological innovations, new standards and laws, transnational solutions and so on. All this aims to seek global approaches to solve health, environmental, technological and socioeconomic problems in a world that offers a range of extreme situations with varied causes and diverse scenarios. Global health and disaster risk management share common strategies and challenges. Globalization is not an unattainable utopia. The current Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated an unprecedented willingness and readiness of countries, regions and communities around the world to face this threat together and create the necessary vaccines to control and possibly eradicate the virus. Every day we are surprised by good and bad news that show contradictory aspects of a humanity that does not realize