Cardiovascular disease and global health: a perspective from the global South

BACKGROUND Global health simply refers to the health of populations in a global context. Global health has been defined as an “area of study, research and practice that focuses on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide”.(1) Scholarship in global health often focuses on worldwide health improvement, reduction of disparities, and protection against global threats that disregard national borders. Global health can be measured as a function of various global diseases and their prevalence in the world and threat to decrease life in the present day. Importantly, global health must not be confused with public health (defined as the science of protecting and improving the health of communities through education, policy making, health promotion and research for disease and injury prevention) or international health (defined as the branch of public health that focuses on lowand middle-income countries [LMICs] receiving foreign aid from high-income countries [HICs]). Table 1 shows the abbreviations.