How does an educated and well accomplished woman – say, a female scientist – in a typical African setting avoid stepping on the often overly sensitive toes of her husband or male partner? How can she balance her career, family, and social roles without neglecting one or offending those who are ready to be offended? What about the bride price t...

Below you find an overview of the EV nominees  (nominations and/or self-nominations) for the EV Governance Committee, by WHO region. The African region is split up in West/Central African region and  East/South African region, as indicated in the poll last week. In 4 regions, an election will be held: Western Pacific, Region of the Americas; ...

Last November the Economic Forum released The Global Gender Gap Report 2014. The report is an attempt to measure the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: (1) health and survival; (2) educational attainment; (3) economic participation and opportunity; and (4) political empowerment. In the Latin American/Caribbean region, 14 o...

There has been a lot of attention in the press for the so called “Uber model “  lately. “Workers on tap”, as the Economist put it, succinctly. A brave new era in which many employees will be replaced by self-employed individuals (or “independent contractors”), and where the most successful businesses will be the ones that design the...

You’ve probably heard the story of the blind men and the elephant—how each man perceived it differently depending on which part of the elephant he touched.  Health systems are like the elephant, with each person having a different view depending on his or her experiences and interactions. These different conceptualizations of health systems...

Throughout the Third Global Health Symposium 2014 (Health Systems Research, Cape Town, South Africa), attention was continuously drawn to the fact that the voices of the “victims” of weak health systems were missing from the symposium. There was a unanimous call to ensure that these people would be included in future HSR conferences. Recentl...

It’s an odd thing to crave cafeteria food. Yet, here it is. An unexpected craving for an interesting salmon ‘burger’ with, you guessed it, fries. A new study in The Lancet on ‘Dietary quality among men and women in 187 countries in 1990 and 2010: a systematic assessment’ doesn’t rank the Belgian diet, very highly. In fact, they fit t...

The Ebola epidemic in the Western African Region has reminded the international community why it is so important to have a skilled health workforce in place to provide essential and universal health services.  It is a crucial requirement to contain outbreaks of re-emerging infectious diseases. Sadly, it is this very scarce workforce that has be...

In many ways, those of us who are academics live for scholarly journals. The research and commentary published in them are what we are judged by; the measure of an academic’s value, a false and perverse measure no less. Journals set the debate (or have the power to do so), arbitrate which knowledge is legitimate, what the right methods are, wh...