International Trade and Health Programme 2011-2016 International Trade and Health Programme (ITH) : ITH is one of five programmes under the collaboration between the Royal Thai Government and the World Health Organization. Agencies on the Thai Government side include Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth), National Health Commission Office (NHCO), National Health Security Office (NHSO), Health Systems Research Institute (HSRI). The programme consists of four main activities- knowledge generation and management, networking, capacity building, policy advocacy. Four main areas of (1) The impact of intellectual property rights on price and access to health products and national medicine system, (2) Products that harmful to health such as tobacco, alcohol, (3) The impact of trade in health services, (4) Trade in foods and the impact of food safety and food security on population health.

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  ITH Goal

  To build up and strengthen individuals and institutional capacities in order to generate evidence for evidence-based policy decisions and coherence policies between international trade and health for the positive health outcomes of the population

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  Objectives

  • To generate and manage knowledge on international trade and health
  • To strengthen the evidence based, transparent and participatory trade negotiation processes and mechanisms related to health in line with mechanism of the Article 190 in the 2007 Constitution
  • To build up capacity of all partners to understand the implications and to be able to get the most benefits from international trade, with adequate and effective measures to avoid or mitigate the negative consequences
  • To advocate the knowledge and policy recommendation generated by the Programme to the public and the relevant trade negotiation
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  Expected outcomes

  • Concrete evidences on the implications of various aspects of international trade on health Public awareness including the trade personnel on the implications of international trade on health, particularly the mutual understanding and collaboration between trade and health
  • Establishing transparent and participatory trade negotiation processes and mechanisms in order to create policy coherence between trade and health policies.
  • International trade and health information clearing house
  • Increasing capacity of all partners on international trade and health
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