India has made significant advances in becoming the generic pharmaceutical hub of the world. One would expect that with such a flourishing market, availability of essential cancer medicines should not be a problem. With people flocking to India from countries like China, UAE and New Zealand for ‘pharmaceutical tourism’ in the hope of purchas...

American Indian scholar Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart developed the concept of historical trauma in relation to the cumulative emotional harm of colonialism. The term has since been applied to the legacies of slavery, genocide, and war as well. These events reverberate through generations, whether through social processes or epigenetics, leadin...

It is Mental Health Awareness Week (May 13th-19th) and this has, as usual, brought discussions around mental health to the fore. The initiative began in 2001 and has been organised by the Mental Health Foundation, UK since then. Each year has a dedicated theme – this year’s is #bodyimage. ‘Body Image’ is a term that describes how one thin...

Australia is the only developed nation endemic for trachoma, a blinding bacterial infection of the eye. Developing countries such as Morocco and Cambodia have recently eliminated the disease. However, in Australia, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, trachoma remains highly prevalent among Indigenous Australians living in remote commun...

Last year, members of the health community came together to commemorate Alma Ata. While there was cause for celebration in Astana, it was nonetheless clear that progress had been uneven and people in some parts of the world were in danger of being left behind. There are of course many reasons why 40 years after the initial declaration, the world...

On 15-16 April, the Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR), a local think tank working at the regional (i.e. West African) level, gathered stakeholders from various fields in Dakar, Senegal. Reflections and discussions focused on results of a pilot research project led by the think tank on measurement of efforts to reach health-related...

This April, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) released a report entitled “Universal Health in the 21st Century: 40 Years of Alma-Ata.” As the title implies, the report commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Alma Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care (PHC), arguably one of the most important documents in the history of global hea...

This blog describes the journey of the Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center, a knowledge translation platform established in a middle-income country, in revolutionizing policy-making. Learn more about K2P’s successes, challenges and transformations, and how it paved the way towards a world in which the best available evidence informs health policy...

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is a term commonly used to define a relationship whereby [the] public and private sector [resources] are brought together to achieve a common purpose. PPPs are common across sectors (including the health sector) and geographical settings. The author of this article presents her perspective on the occasional ...