Dear Colleagues,

As we already hinted last week, IHP is about to go on holidays. We know, the pandemic doesn’t “take holidays’ (unfortunately), but we trust you’ll get your updates via our colleagues from Global Health Now, Devex,  Geneva Health Files, HPW, FT health, … not to mention the permanent thrill of Twitter (my Twitter feed sometimes feels like a never-ending penalty shoot-out between England and Italy). If all goes well, IHP will be back on 20 August, with ‘The Mother of all Comprehensive IHP Newsletters’, a ‘catch-up issue’.  

Meanwhile, how has the world been faring this week? The Delta variant, in combination with the grotesque global vaccine inequity, is fueling a “two-track pandemic”. Dr. Tedros updated his metaphors this week, accurately in my opinion. Long gone are the times when it was all about  ‘global solidarity’ or ‘a global public good’ (Macron, Ursula et al); even ‘enlightened interest’ doesn’t seem to entice most rich countries and Big Pharma...