In this article, based on a talk given to a recent meeting on global health, Julio Frenk and Octavio Gómez-Dantés argue that, although there are many threats inherent in globalisation, improving health is a unifying activity. They suggest that “exchange, evidence, and empathy” should characterise international activities to improve health and health care for all the world's people

In the aftermath of the events of 11 September Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, reminded us of what he called “the fragility of our frontiers in the face of the world's new challenges” (Labour Party Conference, Brighton, October 2001). This shift of human affairs from the restricted frame of the nation state to the vast theatre of planet earth is not only affecting trade, finance, science, the environment, crime, and terrorism; it is also changing the nature of health challenges facing people all over the world.1

In 1997 an influential report by the US Institute of Medicine stated: “Distinctions between domestic and international health problems are losing their usefulness and are often misleading.”2 We are all coming closer to each other. One of the great revolutions of the 20th century was, in the words of the historian Eric Hobsbawm, the virtual annihilation of time and distance.3