Last week, David Graeber passed away, way too early, unfortunately. In this short article, some ITM staff dwell on what David Graeber meant to them, and what the global health community could and perhaps should learn from him. Feel free to weigh in as well under the blog. “Yes, we must mourn David Graeber. Thinking about his work is probably ...

While contraceptive use and uptake of family planning in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have been on the rise in recent years and decades, especially after the 2006 adoption of the African Union’s Maputo Program of Action, the 2012 London summit on Family Planning and the biannual international FP conferences after that (with many taking place in S...

(A longer version of this piece was originally published in Ceasefire ) The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has stirred up debates that previous crises such as SARS or Ebola didn’t, probably because it reached Europe all the way to the Americas, with death tolls much higher than in China. It appears “The West needs to bleed” for audiences to be...

In a recent blog, Hellowell and colleagues express concerns about the ability of the private health market to survive the shock of COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). They call on governments to support the private sector in mitigating the risks imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. WHO’s recommendation for a ‘whole-of-society- a...

As India tries to navigate the transition from Lockdown 4.0 to Unlock 1.0 (quite oblivious of the totalitarian nature of the words we chose to represent our national response to the pandemic), it is worth reflecting upon our lost opportunity as a nation to address social equity and its direct corollary – mental healthcare. But let’s start with...

The World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30 2020, the same day India reported its first confirmed case. The country, so long oblivious to this developments-except for the southern state of Kerala which had a preparedness plan ready by mid-January-quickly sprang into action. Scr...

Last week, after more than a month of thinly and less thinly veiled threats, President Trump announced the U.S. would “terminate” its relationship with the WHO. As if he was playing in his own Terminator movie, a really bad sequel at that. It is not immediately clear whether the president can fully withdraw U.S. funding from WHO without an a...

version 6, 1 June 2020 You find the pdfs ( in English and in French) of this update here: Covid-19-in-DRC-and-sSA-observations-reflections-WVD-ITM-v6Download Covid-19-in-DRC-and-sSA-observations-reflections-WVD-ITM-v6-FRDownload INTRODUCTION: I am staff member of ITM-Antwerp, now based in Kinshasa during the corona crisis (rather by coincidence...

As efforts to respond and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic are ongoing globally, the strained healthcare services for the already conflict-traumatised populations in Bangladesh also need attention. The plight of over 600,000 Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar—hosted in two registered camps (Kutupalong and Nayapara) and other areas—is inten...