More than a fortnight after the Times broke the news on the Oxfam scandal, the aftershocks are still being felt in the humanitarian assistance and development sector. The story has more twists and turns than a cheap garden hose, and there seems to be a new development every day, with several other organisations admitting to having the same probl...

Decent people are outraged about the behavior of aid workers in Haiti some seven years ago. Of course, this is triggered by a deeper sentiment – the unease we all have about the state of affairs in the world. In a western world beleaguered by identity crises, climate change, refugees and new values, a scandal in the humanitarian world helps to...

Last month was a busy month in the world of global health. The spotlight was on WHO’s 142nd Executive Board meeting, and the thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW) for 2019-2023, to be formally approved at this year’s (71st) World Health Assembly, if all goes according to plan. The Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) had its annual ga...

Initially launched in October 2012 by the administration of former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) in June 2016 under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari re-launched the Save One Million Lives (SOML) project. It was to focus on increasing the use of high impact reproductive, child health and ...

“Can I dispense Floxapen (antibiotic) for Flucazole (antifungi)…?” asked a roadside drug vendor. This, and many others, are some of the poor practices Cameroonians are exposed to on a daily basis. What an untimely coincidence, at a time when countries are aligning themselves towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda and ...

Two weeks ago, Nigerian Twitter was in uproar over the death of a certain Ahmed Victor Idowu. He was a House Officer (i.e. a qualified doctor practising under supervision in hospital in the first couple of years after graduation) who died from Lassa Fever contracted in the line of duty. Lassa fever, for the uninitiated among us, is according to ...

I do. I like sci-fi too, and I’ll tell you why. It is because sci-fi – and zombie movies – are mirrors. They may show you people travelling in spaceships or chain-sawing the living dead, but the stories they tell are really about the era and the society in which they are/were made. They are in fact about us. This may seem obvious to some o...

Forty years after the well-intentioned Alma Ata Declaration (1978), ‘Health for All’ remains a distant goal. This is particularly so for populations living in vulnerable parts of the world – conflict areas, prone to natural disasters, or geographically remote and vulnerable areas such as the Sundarbans in India. How does one, in the era of...

Over the past few days, I’ve been fortunate to attend the first half of the 142nd session of WHO’s Executive Board meeting in Geneva, after a couple of  preparatory civil society meetings  hosted by the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2). The EB meeting provides a fresh start to the new (global health) year, and the hope is of course that for...