Vimala (fictitious name) loved her role as a gram(a) sevika ( i.e. a woman employed to advise and assist villagers in matters of community welfare and development – in Kerala (local language) known as ‘grama sevika’).   Whenever she had the opportunity to help poor villagers collect their welfare pensions, she felt a deep sense of satisfacti...

This week Governance team members of the Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) met at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, together with a few “liaisons” from partner institutes and the focal person from the new EV secretariat ( APHRC), Francis. One might ask, why meet during a seemingly unending pandemic, a very worrying geopo...

Every day we make choices affecting our health. We are challenged by busy lifestyles, environmental threats and poor-quality foods. To our rescue, there are many “quick fixes” available on the market. I used to believe that dietary supplements are “the solution”. I consumed pills and powders just as if they were candy. But one day I sta...

While we were reeling with the effects of COVID-19, around 243 million women and girls around the world faced domestic abuse and violence during the pandemic. Before 2020, donors like  USAID, the  Overseas Private Investment  Corporation (OPIC), the Canadian Government along with other major philanthropic organizations pledged vast sums of money...

In September 2021, activists celebrated Mexico’s Supreme Court decision on the decriminalization of abortion. Although not a total surprise in light of recent debate and campaigning, it was still a landmark ruling in Latin America’s second largest Catholic nation. See the related tweet by the Executive Director of the Women’s Equality Centr...

Today is World Health Day 2022, though I will likely remember it as my 38th birthday. There is ample room for progress in the field of health today. Yet, three days after the latest IPCC report, and three days before the (first round of the) French presidential elections, I suspect it is clear to everyone that handing over a non-livable planet t...

Prologue We aim for patient-centered healthcare, but the patient remains a passive recipient of care in that model. In malaria-endemic countries, lower-level facilities lack the human resources, equipment, supplies and structural arrangements needed to provide care.  What if communities became stewards of their own health?  What if they were act...

Women’s History Month  ended on a rather depressing note, with GH5050’s hard-hitting 2022 report, Boards for All?. Through “A review of power, policy and people on the boards of organizations active in global health”, the report revealed that men from high income countries (HICs) continue to dominate and control the positions of power and...

The world is in a dire state and everybody is talking about it  – and I want to just say a few words about how we do this. The Wintermanifest  (published at the start of the Omicron wave in Belgium) questioned the perceived dominance of virologists and epidemiologists in the battle against the Corona virus in Belgium. The manifest was mainly c...