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As we can see every day on our tv screens and on social media, ours are times of escalating armed conflicts, climate chaos, democratic decline and health emergencies. Indeed, one message is emerging consistently across mainstream media and reports of international institutions: we live in an era of multiple crises. Earlier this week, at WHO’s...
I ‘ve just been to a place that not only dealt with a war in the nineties, but in more recent times also with an earthquake, flooding ( in 2020 and again in 2023), a summer storm that damaged 10.000 trees, a heatwave, the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as economic instability and inflation. The country also introduced the Euro this year – an...
“Care is an anathema to capitalism. Its virtues are capitalism’s vices. Its employment-rich foundation for wellbeing is capitalism’s productivity crisis. To a mainstream economist, employment intensity translates directly into low or stagnating productivity growth. The very thing, in that view, that is holding us back from the economic g...
It’s that time of the year again. Happy European spring days where one would usually see country delegates and the global health crowd gathering at the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva. A bit like cows entering a meadow after a year in their stalls. Each year at the WHA, country delegates come together to agree upon some sensitive...
I was this week in New York, at the United Nations. More specifically I participated in the UN High Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage as a representative of the Medicus Mundi International Network Health for All! The UHC meeting was part of a series of high-level political meetings taking place before and during the 74th session of the ...
A few weeks ago the near-final political declaration of the UN High level Meeting (UNHLM) on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) became available. The main contentious issues are on language related to sexual and reproductive health, rights and gender equality (par. 68 & 69) and access to health care for migrants, refugees, internally displaced pers...
Last week the new EU Global Health Strategy (EUGH) was released. This short piece, which ought to be followed by more in-depth analysis, provides some first reflections on what can be expected, and what the limitations are of the implementation of such a strategy. This blog touches upon 3 aspects: where is EUGH coming from and why is it present...
Twenty years ago, the world was facing a morally unbearable situation. On the bright side: there was – at last – an effective treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Patients in high-income countries could benefit from the antiretroviral tri-therapy, and their life-expectancy was restored. On the negative side: this therapy was, d...
Last week, David Graeber passed away, way too early, unfortunately. In this short article, some ITM staff dwell on what David Graeber meant to them, and what the global health community could and perhaps should learn from him. Feel free to weigh in as well under the blog. “Yes, we must mourn David Graeber. Thinking about his work is proba...
(cross-posted from Ghent Centre for Global Studies where it was published first: https://www.globalstudies.ugent.be/the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-the-irrelevance-of-the-sdgs/2/ ) According to Remco van de Pas, SDG3 on health and wellbeing has been irrelevant to address global challenges in this area. The futility of this SDG and limits o...
(cross-posted from Clingendael where it was published first) And so it has happened. What many public health professionals and security experts had thought would eventually occur is now unfolding. It is perhaps what the World Health Organization (WHO) defines as a disease “X”, an unknown pathogen that causes human disease. A coronavirus...
(crossposted from Medium ‘Health for All’ where it was first published) There was once a dream. A dream that led to the establishment of the United Nations (UN) in 1946 whereby an idealistic view of international cooperation was regarded as a key mechanism to prevent war and free humanity from widespread misery. Chapter I of the UN charter ...
‘Caught between a rock and a hard place’ is the expression (and Stones song ) that comes to mind having visited Marrakesh recently. Until a few months before the adoption of the (now notorious) UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, quiet diplomacy and technical discussions guided its development process. At the time of ...
Antonio Gramsci wrote around 1930 that the crisis precisely consists in the fact that “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” This quote was used by Jane Kelsey, a law professor from the University of Auckland, during the opening plenary session of the 4th People’s Heal...
Dissonance: Def. 1. n. A harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds; discord, 2.n. Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict (The Free Dictionary). This is the sentiment that stayed with me after having participated in the 5th global conference on Health Systems Research in Liverpool and directly afterwards, the 10th World Health Sum...
In the early days of the New Year, i find myself looking into some of the background documents for the upcoming Executive Board (EB) meeting of WHO later this month, EB 142. After the last special Board meeting in November 2017 (EBSS4), where WHO’s new DG Dr. Tedros discussed a (revised) draft version of WHO’s ambitious 13th Global Program...
On a rainy, misty day I found myself travelling early in the morning to Bonn, Germany. The former capital of West Germany (for the younger readers of this blog ) hosts this year’s annual global climate change negotiations, the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP 23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). My des...
The global health community recently witnessed the first major test of the new WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus’s nascent tenure. On October 22 2017, following several days of intense outrage and scrutiny, particularly in the news and on social media, the Director-General rescinded the appointment of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtim...
Last week, I participated in three consecutively-held global health seminars which focused on the changing nature of health cooperation and the increasing prominence of global health in international politics. Coincidentally, all meetings referred to (the need for) a paradigm shift in global health and the transformative change required to attai...
This week marked a historic moment for the global health workforce community. The High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, chaired by France’s President François Hollande and South-Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, delivered its final report and recommendations to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the sidelines of the ...
Last week, I was in Abidjan, the ‘economic’ capital of the Ivory Coast. I was invited by the WHO to facilitate a dialogue on international health workforce mobility during an inter-sectoral consultation of policymakers and partners in Francophone countries. This consultation feeds into a UN High Level Commission on Health Employment and Ec...
Next week, WHO’s Executive Board will discuss the draft Global Strategy on human resources for health: Workforce 2030. If all goes well, the final version will be endorsed at the 69th World Health Assembly in May. Workforce 2030 provides a new and progressive health workforce agenda. A decade ago, The World Health report 2006 already estimated...
It’s over a year now since the third global symposium on health systems research took place in Cape Town. At the symposium, the science and practice of people-centred health systems took center stage. Almost 2000 participants represented 125 countries in Cape Town, so it clearly was a global conference. The 2014 edition of the Emerging Voice...
Resilience is the next “big thing” in global health and health systems development. It is a reaction to the impact of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the financial meltdown in the US and EU, and global climate change. The principle has been firmly anchored in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): “By 2030, build the resilience of t...
‘Resisting Resilience’ was the title of the most inspiring presentation I attended in the last half year. Early June, Mark Neocleous, a professor of the Critique of Political Economy, presented his view at a conference on the resilience discourse organized by Medico International in Frankfurt. If you want to know what makes his argument ...
The last year saw the re-emergence of a century-old economic idea, namely that investing in health is (good) value for money. The Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (CIH), prompted by the 20th anniversary of the 1993 World Development Report, has argued that a Grand Convergence in health is possible by the year 2035. Global health 2035: a ...
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...
The contrast has been remarkable, to say the least, between the in your face health & social situation in Guinea – which I visited a few weeks ago – and the rather formal diplomatic discussions at the WHO Executive Board Special Session on Ebola last weekend. The heat in Conakry and the cold snow in Geneva were only partly responsible for this...
Remco Van de Pas is currently for a research assignment in Guinea, one of three countries in West Africa affected by Ebola. Together with the national research center for training and promotion of rural health (CNFRSR) of Maférinyah, Conakry, the Institute of Tropical Medicine will explore policies and possibilities to strengthen the public h...
Remco Van de Pas (ITM) is currently for a research assignment in Guinea, one of three countries in West Africa affected by Ebola. Together with the national research center for training and promotion of rural health (CNFRSR) of Maférinyah, Conakry, the Institute of Tropical Medicine will explore policies and possibilities to strengthen the ...
Over the last years there has been much research on and proposals for governance in health systems whether at the district, national or global level. Since mid-nineties or so there have been reforms in countries to initiate public- private cooperation, e.g. via the contracting of health service delivery. At global level, there has been debate ab...
The citizens of the Republic of Indonesia, a vast country with over 250 million inhabitants, have an important presidential election ahead of them on the 9th of July 2014. After 10 years of government under the current president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, next week’s election provides the voters with two distinct political options for the natio...
The 67th World Health Assembly (WHA) closed last week, after long-working days, and adopting many resolutions on public health issues of global importance. In fact, this WHA broke many records, with the most resolutions and decisions (41) ever, as well as the most words translated for a five-day Assembly (1,300,000), and the most meetings (29...
