After a whirlwind of recent travel across Southern Africa, the realities of the continent hit home and pretty much keep me awake at night, but also close to tears and highly angered when I think of developmental issues on the ground.  Against that backdrop, May 25th is  the perfect day for reflection and hopefully action, as it marks Africa Da...

As many of you know, global health is riding high on the G20 agenda. As Ilona Kickbusch notes this is largely thanks to Germany so it is no surprise then that the first ever G20 Health Ministers meeting is being  hosted by Germany on 19, 20 May.   At the meeting  in Berlin, themed “Promoting Health”,  G20 Health Ministers will tackle an...

Human resources for health are a critical building block of every health system. In India, the health system has struggled with the shortage and inequitable distribution of human resources, including the challenge of attracting and retaining health workers in remote settings. This blog, on the lives and work of crew aboard a mobile boat clinic, ...

Global health security is again on everybody’s minds, with the latest Ebola outbreak in the DRC. As Laurie Garrett put it in Foreign Policy, the  “new Ebola outbreak in the DRC Congo puts WHO and the global health system post-2014 reforms to the test”.   It is thus quite likely that the DRC crisis (and the way WHO & others in the syste...

Ninety seconds. That’s the amount of time an algorithm has to convince you to start your next binge-watching session. Lights, camera, inaction. Given its increasing monopoly over entertainment, Netflix seems to have perfected its tantalizing algorithm, seducing millions of people to endlessly consume the rabbit hole of tailor-made TV. “There’s n...

              Reflections on the 2017 Consortium of Universities in Global Health held in Washington DC, USA (April 6-9)   Health systems are getting more complex than ever, encompassing no longer just the typical building blocks of health systems and their interactions, but also venturing to include areas of study on planetary health – or “ga...

Two weeks ago, I read with much delight the suggestions that my friend Kristof proposed for the future of planetary health. Overall, there is nothing to oppose with his suggestions and observations. In fact, these are the kinds of conversations that are very much needed to push the frontiers of a young idea. I would even say that planetary healt...

In the last few years, the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montréal has developed an expertise in approaches towards diseases and patients. Take for example the approach that is most commonly referred to as “patient partnerships,” whereby interdisciplinary healthcare teams put to use the patient’s experiences, history, and exper...

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are a critical component of the health workforce in low-resource settings, but they do not get – at least for now – due recognition in many of these settings. After the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the government laid the foundation to formalize and concretely recognize the work of CHWs. Could this revised ...