Lord Nigel Crisp £12.95,  978-1-85315-933-6,  256pp,  Paperback,  January 2010

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
In today’s joined up world we are all connected and the health of one person or nation affects us all. In this important and timely book Nigel Crisp describes how we can all learn from each other, rich and poor, and work together to improve health.

The Honourable Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
This is a very important topic, particularly at a time of global recession. Nobody could be better qualified to compare what is happening in health in the rich and the poor world and to bring fresh and provocative insight to the subject

Julia Neuberger, Baroness Rabbi Neuberger DBE
The poorer world has something of real value to teach the richer world - in health and elsewhere - and Nigel Crisp is supremely well qualified to interpret it for us.

The most striking thing about health in the 21st Century is that the whole world is now so interconnected and so interdependent. This interdependence is changing the way we see health, creating a new global perspective and will affect the way we need to act.

Turning the world upside down is a search to understand what is happening and what it means for us all. It is based on the authors journey from running the largest health system in the world to working in some of the poorest countries and draws on his experiences to explore new ideas and innovations from around the world.

The book has three unique features:

• Describes what rich countries can learn from poorer ones, as well as the other way round.
  
• Deals with health in rich and poor countries in the same way, not treating them as totally different things, and suggests that instead of talking about international development we should talk about co-development.
  
• Sets out a new vision for global health, based on our interdependence, our desire for independence and our rights and accountabilities as citizens of the world.
  

There is an unfair import export business in people and ideas that flourishes between rich and poor countries. Rich countries import trained health workers and export their ideas and ideology about health to poorer ones, whether or not they are appropriate or useful. What, we may ask, if we were to turn the world upside own - so the import export business was reversed and poorer countries exported their ideas, experience and health workers?

Health leaders in poorer countries, without the resources or the baggage of rich countries have learned to innovate, build on the strengths of the population and their communities and develop new approaches which are relevant for the rich and the poor alike.

At the same time richer countries and their health workers could help African countries to train, in their own country, the workers they need for the future. They would help pay a debt for all the workers who have migrated and learn for themselves the new ways of working they will need in the 21st Century.

We could stop talking about international development – as something the rich world does to the poor – and start talking about co-development, our shared learning and shared future.

There is already a movement of people and ideas travelling in this direction. Young people get this intuitively. Many thousands of young professionals want a different professional education for themselves - in global health. Together with the leaders from the poorer countries and the innovators around the world, they are creating a new global vision for health.

Turning the world upside down is a search for understanding that helps us to see how Western Scientific Medicine, which has served us so well for us in the 20th Century, needs to adapt and evolve to cope with the demands of the 21st Century. It sets out a new vision and concludes by describing the actions we need to take to accelerate the change.

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