Caveat lector! The author of these 907 words is a socialist, and dislikes doublespeak. I hope this warning makes you read on as it explains my ambivalent feelings whenever the World Bank speaks out on poverty, inequity, exclusion, or people at large. It all started with the World Development Report 1980, part II: Poverty and Human Development, i...

Doctor Shayan Askary was one the many doctors who decided to boycott work and demand better working conditions through a protest that started on 25 March  2018, in the streets of Erbil in Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI). What she and her colleagues did not expect was the violence encountered from the authorities refusing to respond to their dema...

In South Africa (SA), just like in most other parts of the world, there are many challenges. You probably have an idea if you read a newspaper from time to time. There’s a lot of political and economic instability, and you probably also heard about Cape Town’s water predicament recently. In addition, even after policy reforms aimed at reduci...

As many of you know, one of the perennial questions around the ‘Emerging Voices’ venture is this one: when are you actually ‘Emerged’?  (+ grin) I don’t have a clue – feeling at times closer to a Drowning/Imploding Voice, especially on Friday mornings – but nevertheless thought it might be good to speculate a bit, even we all agre...

A recent article by my friend and editor-in chief of BMJ Global Health, Seye Abimbola, on the North/South framing for development and health resonates more than ever. At the core of the development story is its history of conquest and domination, with colonial rulers helping themselves to cheap labour and natural resources. It has evolved, of co...

Lower Middle Income Countries (LMICs) are experiencing a health workforce crisis. In the Nigerian context, one of the underlying problems is disharmony and unhealthy rivalry among health professionals and this has contributed to the dysfunction of the health system. Yet, effective teamwork among health professionals is recognised as an essential...

Last week I attended the launch of the Global Health Watch 5 in Brussels. The launch (on 29 March) was a joint event organised by the working group “Determinants of International Health”, a group that has regular meetings, organizes events, writes contributions for international events, and publishes documents. Organisations involved this ti...

The healthcare situation in Venezuela has  worsened. In the first three months of 2018 a decay of all indices has been registered, and the forecasts are dismal for the future. Hospitals lack basic staff and people suffer malnutrition. The country is facing the re-emergence of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis considered “under control...

There exists a tension between the optimism and promise of new technologies, and the reality of working in low resource environments. This tension has an important bearing in global health security, where there is an urgent need to guide and operationalise technological innovations for individual and collective health security. However, new tech...