The history of the field of global health is always traced back to tropical medicine, an earlier discipline started by former Western empires. Generally, the focus of tropical medicine was the study of infectious diseases prevalent in colonies in the tropics. The purpose was to find measures to protect the colonizers from acquiring these disease...

When the Tedros administration assumed office in 2017, there was some apprehension in certain sections of the global health community, about the extent to which WHO would protect and pursue the contentious issue of access to medicines. Less than two years on, one can be fairly convinced that this administration is serious in leading from the fr...

Each year, the global health calendar (as graphically summarized by Kent Buse on Twitter recently – here’s part one) begins with the Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) in Bangkok – together with the WHO Executive Board Meeting in Geneva, of course. Under the patronage of the Thai royal family, PMAC honors Thailand’s Father of Public He...

Yearly, since 1969, Nigeria suffers fatal Lassa Fever outbreaks. In a bid to increase awareness and curb the menace, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) hosted a two-day international conference on the disease. Participants at the event got some encouraging vaccine news among others. Tanko Al-Makura is governor of Nasarawa State, in n...

Rachel Thompson is a researcher currently based at a UK think-tank. In this blog she shares her personal reflections from the recent Prince Mahidol Award Conference (PMAC) on the political economy of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), considering the wider implications for our understanding of Global Health. Last week the elite of Global Health g...

I was more than happy to go back to Geneva again as an IHP Correspondent, this time, to attend the first few days of the 144th WHO Executive Board (EB) Meeting. I went to Geneva, as Lonely Planet would describe it, ‘on a shoestring’. However, the beautiful white landscape due to abundant snowfall made me quickly forget about the budget const...

By 2022, all persons in Kenya are expected to have access – as and when needed – to quality and essential health services through a single unified benefit package without the risk of financial hardship. This is in line with a directive made by the President of Kenya on 12 December 2017, whereby achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2022, ...

Le monde est un lieu divisé et l’un des obstacles auxquels nous sommes confrontés est la langue. Les silos de connaissances s’accumulent souvent, les gens ne lisant que certains corpus d’œuvres, en fonction de l’endroit où ils lisent et dans quelle langue. Les milieux universitaires sont également fortement touchés par ces problèmes. ReBU...

Academic publishers’ timelines are interesting. Exactly a year ago, Paul et al.’s paper received unprecedented attention in the global health stratosphere. Acclaimed by some, criticised by others, the paper certainly sparked much debate on the relevance of performance-based financing (PBF) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This ma...