One year ago Argentina voted for a change in government. After 12 years of Kirchnerism, 51% of the population voted for “the change”. The reasons for this are complex and diverse, but what can’t be denied is that the current president won the election with a mix of promises of change and conservation of the “good policies” of his prede...

At the very time of writing this editorial, a few days before Christmas, Berlin, the capital of Germany, the land of Angela Merkel – about the only remaining top politician in Europe with a humanist view (Wir schaffen das!) on the challenge of hosting refugees from the war-ridden Middle-East – was hit by a brutal and murderous attack in a public...

2016 marks a change in history, for better or for worse. In today’s politics, we all witnessed how political correctness, decency and diplomacy were suddenly belittled by being frank, blatant or downright rude, even in dealing with international affairs. Many observers call ours a post-truth post-fact era and even that sounds too nice (I’m f...

The end is near… literally and metaphorically. I think we are at the end of the year, but we are also at the end of something and we are not yet sure what it is. This has been a year of big events and shifts. As a Latin American, I saw with disbelief and frustration the impeachment of the first female president of Brazil, Dilma Rouseff; the ne...

I know Christmas is approaching and so we’re supposed to become a bit more introspective and all that, but hey, it’s still one week! So allow me to share one last frustration (#rant) with you before we all enjoy some time off. As you might have guessed, the “T-word” has something to do with it. I’m not exactly frequenting the corridors...

The population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is ageing rapidly due to improved childhood survival and declining overall fertility. True, the total population share of older adults ( 60 years or more) will remain lower in the SSA region than in other parts of the globe, it is projected – rising from 5% to just under 8% by 2050.  However, the absol...

As much as I sympathize with WHO’s Agnes Soucat when she urges Donald Trump to expand Obamacare and ensure all Americans have access to healthcare, and with Rob Yates when he shouts (not for the first time), on Twitter, that UHC can only be reached through PUBLIC financing, I guess at least in the North (Europe & US), we first of all will have...

After attending the Fourth Symposium on Global Health Systems Research (Vancouver, Canada) themed “Resilient and responsive health systems for a changing world” we could not help but search for our lost glass slipper. Influenced by the catastrophic Ebola and Zika outbreaks, this flagship initiative of Health Systems Global (HSG) was immensel...

Rohingyas are said to be the ‘most persecuted minorities in the world’. I don’t have a journal article citation or scientific reference for this, but if you Google using these phrases, you will find their name. Who are the Rohingyas? They are a Muslim minority group residing in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. According to some scholars, Rohi...