A year after the strongest storm ever recorded to make landfall barreled through populated Visayan Islands in central Philippines, various humanitarian and aid agencies, local and international news organizations have all weighed in on the progress (or lack of progress) of reconstruction efforts. Many lament that very few families have  receive...

Dear colleagues, Ever wondered how journalistic writing is totally different from academic writing? Chances are you do when yet another of your policy briefs satisfies the agency that funded your research but doesn’t make any difference in the outer world. Reason to worry, if you pretend to belong to those “switching the poles in internation...

I’m not a big fan of causal loop diagrams – CLD paintings tend to make me as dizzy as the average Prezi presentation, perhaps my fast increasing brain age has something to do with it (it’s for a reason that I will read with special interest this week’s  Lancet Series on Aging).  But while waiting for the ultimate causal loop diagram of...

Unless tragic emergencies are unfolding – as it is sadly the case now in West Africa – little attention is given to fragile and post-conflict countries. Not only do donors contribute to fragile states 40% less aid than predicted given socio-economic indicators, researchers also quite often refrain from working on/in these contexts. It is only du...

Fahdi wrote this blog together with Vincent De Brouwere.   In many Arab countries, memories of the so called “Arab spring” are still very vivid. However, four years after large swathes of the Tunisian population took to the streets to claim more freedom and improved social justice, a new societal model is still to emerge. Substantial changes...

In December 2006, Gorik Ooms and colleagues argued that humanity may need some kind of “world health insurance” to realize the right to health. Concurring, Wim Van Damme added that it should take the form of a world social health insurance which strengthens health systems in low-income countries. In a nutshell, we argued for a Global Fund fo...

There are many among us who hope the Ebola crisis will turn out to be a wake-up call for the international community to invest more in global health security, including health systems strengthening in countries with (too) weak health systems. Whether you call it a global “Katrina moment” or a global “SARS moment”, depending on your polit...

Now that I am back at my desk in Stockholm I cannot stop thinking about the Global health systems symposium that I attended in Cape Town, maybe because it was my first! And of course I cannot and never will forget the great experience and knowledge gained being part of the Emerging Voices 2014, definitely a life changing experience not to mentio...

Disclaimer: This blog is not intended to hurt anyone, but rather to reflect on some personal experiences in a humorous way! I reiterate that the team from ITM and UWC did such a fantastic job arranging this program! I also thoroughly enjoyed my stay at Hotel Verde which became like home. Also, I’ve made a couple of long semi-technical presenta...