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Young (and occasionally less young) researchers, mostly from LMICs, present their views on global health issues.
COVID-19 was a watershed moment for all countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, especially after decades of geopolitical and economic shocks. But even before the pandemic struck, sustainable development was already jeopardized by an unstable economic environment and scarce resources, among other challenges. See for example ...
In November 2021, in a mid-term evaluation for their paper on ‘Fundamentals of Political Science’ (an introductory course to political science that I teach), one of the questions I had asked my students in their first semester of the undergraduate integrated Humanities/Law honours programme, was the following: explain the (heavy) ‘luggage...
In early 2021, local media reports in Brazil uncovered that some healthcare workers were injecting people with what were termed “wind vaccinations” – empty syringes. At the time, it was unclear whether these were cases of accidental poor practice, purposeful deception because of antivax sentiment amongst health professionals, or whether va...
Since 2012, Mali has been facing a socio-political crisis due to terrorists and rebels in the north, and an inter-community conflict in the center. Illegal armed groups, both jihadist and non-jihadist ones, have been spreading terror, taking advantage of the weakness (or even absence) of state services to establish their rule at the expense of t...
Many low-middle income countries rely at least partly on international foreign aid to tackle public health problems. The funding is generally managed by non-government organizations (NGOs). I used to work as a technical officer in an NGO in my home country, Indonesia, before starting my masters in the health economics, policy and management at K...
According to recent estimates nearly 1 in 3 women aged 15 years and older, face either physical or sexual violence in their lifetime globally. And that was before the Covid pandemic. Indeed, in the slipstream of the worldwide pandemic, Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sadly also seems to have no boundaries. When I reflect on these dire ...
A lot has been written about the potential link between excessive use of pornography and poor mental health; sexual violence, and more generally whether addiction to pornography is a public health problem. There is neither a definitive clinical consensus nor a decisive scientific stance on this potential causality. However, there is no denying ...
For more than two decades, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been recording a boom in the production of health professionals, especially doctors and nurses. This situation is directly linked to the liberalization of higher and university education which has led to the uncontrolled proliferation of schools of medicine and nursing in almo...
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted Africa’s overdependence on imports to meet vaccine needs for epidemic response and routine immunization. The continent imports over 90% of its vaccines. In response to these needs, the African Union (AU) and the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched th...