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...

Just like management gurus, we in the health sector can produce our own checklists. What do successful health programmes have in common? Inspired by a visit to Ethiopia’s health extension worker programme, here are my top-ten habits of a successful health programme. What are yours?   Committed leadership It is a cliché, but the mobilisation...

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several days of intense outrage and scrutiny, particularly in the news and on social media, the Director-General rescinded the appointment of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtim...

Brussels, 7:00. My alarm rings and I slowly doze off into self-imbued life contemplation before my phone’s News alert forces me to connect with the real world, this big blue room outside my small warm bedroom. I look at my screen, eyes half closed to accommodate to the contrast between the shimmery engine and the comfy twilight of a wintery mo...

On behalf of the Latin American Network for Multidisciplinary Research on Chronic Diseases A 46-year-old woman affected by a heart attack in Zimbabwe, a (male) heavy smoker aged 68 and recently diagnosed with lung cancer in Australia, a 52-year-old Indonesian man with neurological stroke sequelae due to long-term undiagnosed hypertension, …  ...

Last Sunday  we went with a group of ex-ITM-colleagues to hear Naomi Klein talk about her latest  book “No is not enough” in the beautiful De Roma theater in Antwerp. A journalist led the conversation with Naomi. Her questions were unfortunately almost exclusively focused on Trump, a topic Klein didn’t manage to escape either. Klein’s ...

From October 27th to 29th, New Delhi, a wonderfully vibrant, colorful and youthful city, hosted over 1000 delegates and 125 youths from 65 different countries exploring issues related to adolescent health. The 11th World Congress on Adolescent Health, themed “Investing in Adolescent Health – The Future is now” was organized by the Internat...

  Mark Twain is often credited for the quote, “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over”. Despite the quote’s likely questionable origin, water is becoming an increasingly angry and thirsty elephant-in-the-room for world leaders. Tipped as the “oil of the 21st century”, will swelling water demands precipitate the levels of c...

On the 15th of August 2017 the newly appointed director of WHO Tedros Adhanom made his first official visit to China. After three days Tedros left with a pledge of 20 million dollars more and a clarified plan to use China’s One belt One Road initiative as the backbone of global healthcare reforms targeting women, children, teens and emergencie...