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Young (and occasionally less young) researchers, mostly from LMICs, present their views on global health issues.
In the past few weeks, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has gone global affecting almost all countries, societies, and health systems. It is disrupting varying spheres of our social, political, or economical lives. It is also intruding into our spiritual domain. Spirituality is the foundation of human existence and getting more attention in Gl...
2020 and the world has gone viral (pun intended)! Some are comparing the current situation to the 1918 flu epidemic that took more than 30 million lives. Only time will tell. With COVID-19 now becoming a pandemic, it seems we are all at risk, however there is one group of people who will face greater challenges and consequences, these are peopl...
I clearly remember the first Monday of 2015. At the time, I was in Germany on an India-Germany student exchange programme. Sitting in my cold dark room, I was contemplating the transdisciplinary nature of my PhD study focusing on development aid and health systems strengthening in India. With a medical and health administration background and (a...
With COVID-19 cases slowly but steadily rising in Africa, the need for a real surveillance partnership between European and African airport authorities becomes urgent. Unless you have lived on another planet lately, you probably know by now that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak started in China in November-December 2019 and was decla...
(cross-posted from Clingendael where it was published first) And so it has happened. What many public health professionals and security experts had thought would eventually occur is now unfolding. It is perhaps what the World Health Organization (WHO) defines as a disease “X”, an unknown pathogen that causes human disease. A coronavirus pan...
The greatest contradiction of our times might be that we were told “not to panic” but at the same time we now have strict measures in place, so what is the truth here? I have to ask, what is being hidden from us, it is all not adding up, it seems… I have to admit, I wasn’t one to take the #CoronaVirus that seriously until recently, I me...
The point of departure for this blog is the apparent frequency of criminalization strategies in early government responses to the Corona virus. While much attention has been given to the securitization of global health responses – also in the case of Corona – less systematic focus has been given to the partial criminalization of infectious d...
There are at least a billion people with disabilities worldwide and this number is rising with ageing and population growth, making them the largest minority group globally. Among them, the number of people using assistive technology for mobility is estimated to double by 2050. In India alone, at least 20% of the disabled are confronted with lim...
Climate change is among the key themes for the upcoming Sixth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, to be held in Dubai later this year. Health professionals (such as myself) have clearly recognized the huge opportunities and challenges that climate change has brought. But as I journey back after attending the International Conference on ...