A few years back, walking through the narrow trail at Mar Elias Camp, I wasn’t able to process the telltale signs. Today, crouching under the looming entangled electrical wires and jumping across dirtied waterbeds snaking around makeshift houses, I understand the importance of rethinking health initiatives put forth in my country, Lebanon. This ...

Ten days ago, a friend rang to ask me whether it would be reasonable to start a cottage-industry sewing cotton facemasks. Thomas lives in Daliganj, Lucknow, a densely populated urban community where families live in single brick rooms. He thought facemasks could both protect people from coronavirus and generate income for families struggling in ...

(French & Portuguese versions of this statement below) The West African Network of Emerging Leaders in Health Policy and Systems (WANEL) is West Africa’s first network of emerging researchers and practitioners in health policy and systems, working to support stronger and resilient health systems in the ECOWAS sub-region. WANEL facilitates peer...

In a world set afire by Covid-19, April 2 remains World Autism Awareness Day. Another frontline to worry about in times of health, economic and social crisis: the more than a billion people worldwide who have disabilities. While adults with disabilities sometimes have a voice and a platform to fight for what is rightfully theirs, very little att...

The 6th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (Dubai 2020) intends to facilitate deeper engagement with the political forces that surround health systems. While politics exist everywhere and at all levels, there is a tendency to equate these forces with ‘Big Politics’, the power dynamics that play out at global and national levels. In ...

As the global Covid-19 pandemic seems to grow exponentially at this point, we are reminded – as so often during times of crisis – how critically important responsive systems are to prevent morbidity and mortality during an outbreak. On World TB Day, we reflect how there are obvious similarities between Covid-19 and tuberculosis (TB), especia...

Healthcare is the fundamental right of every individual. However, accessibility to quality, affordable and adequate healthcare facilities still remains a major challenge for most lower-middle income countries. Perhaps this is even more true for my country, India. As most of you will know, the World Health Organization (WHO) comprehensively defin...

At the beginning of this year, a somewhat nebulous period, when a little known disease was bubbling up in China, it was difficult to distinguish between politically motivated decisions from those taken solely based on evidence keeping public health concerns in mind. A month ago, in her early assessment of the novel coronavirus outbreak that was...

“Hey, aren’t you afraid of dying from the coronavirus? No! I’m afraid of dying dismembered and be blamed for it”, a Chilean cartoonist tweeted a few days ago. And that is more than just a perception for hundreds of thousands of women across Latin America who flocked to the streets on Sunday, in commemoration of International Women’s Da...