It may already be a month since the world’s governments, at last, after 20 years of fancy (and I hope carbon-neutral) conferences, arrived at an agreement for global climate action, but people are still talking about COP 21 – which is a good thing because most UN conferences end up vanishing in oblivion and then suddenly re-emerge in politic...

Last weekend, on 12 December, the world celebrated UHC Day, with a call for greater action and progress on delivering Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Countries all over the world need to take further steps toward ensuring access to essential, affordable, quality health care for every person, everywhere. As you might recall, end of September, at...

While I understand why Angela Merkel was chosen by  Time as 2015’s person of the year, I think it was a mistake, even if I (like many others) appreciate her somewhat surprising moral leadership in the refugee crisis and the – for journalists – irresistible appeal of a catchphrase like ‘Wir Schaffen das’.  (PS: after this weekend, I w...

You’ve arrived. Signs welcomed you and hundreds of others (for a while anyway). You have a temporary room. Temporary furniture. Temporary clothes. A temporary identity. Until your asylum decision is made. Then you move onto being semi-permanently temporary, sometimes living for decades as temporary citizens with stunted rights and privileges. ...

When I was a student in high school, I had plenty of math. I also (not very fondly) remember the “If-Then” structure in programming classes. Bet many people in global health share a similar (analytical) background, even if we didn’t end up as a Steve Jobs of sorts.  Can’t all become entrepreneurs, hey? Well, these days remind me a bit o...

The year 2015 will leave an indelible mark on global health and many global health stakeholders alike. There was, obviously, the devastating Ebola epidemic, which sent shock waves around the world, but on the bright side, the many lessons learned (at least in panel reports) perhaps also laid the foundation for the unprecedented commitment to tac...

Catholics make up 24% and 45% of the Kenyan and Ugandan populations respectively. Recently the two East African neighbours were honoured by a visit from the Pontiff, on his first African visit (25-29 November) – the last leg of his brief African journey was Central African Republic (30 November). In this blog I will just focus on the pope’s vi...

I usually tend to see the glass half full; even my Twitter profile says so. Yet, if I look at maternal and neonatal health after 15 years of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) I can’t help but stare across the empty top end of the glass. The 57th ITM Colloquium on Maternal and Neonatal Health in Rabat (24-27 November 2015), co-organised by IT...

Not long ago, in an article published on the IHP website by one of its collaborators, Werner Soors, ‘A lexicon and a question’, it was asked whether it really made sense to differentiate between the social determinants of health (SDH) and the social determination of health approach. The article was based on a critical analysis of our article...