Globally, medical students and doctors with disabilities have been denied their rightful inclusion. This also rings true for India, where almost 80,000 doctors graduate each year. It is estimated that so far 0.38% of 1614777 medical and dental aspirants registered as having a disability. Only 43% of these cleared the qualifying nationwide entran...

Uganda has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the second wave (June – August 2021). As of October 13,  Uganda had recorded 124,808 cases and 3,152 deaths. The social and economic impact has also been huge. And so, just like in other parts of the world, the COVID-19 vaccines have been seen as a ray of light, restoring so...

Blessed are those that get invited to High-Level summits, and even more so if they take place in Paris. On 5 and 6 October 2021, the French Minister for Solidarity and Health, Olivier Véran hosted a global mental health summit in the French capital, the 3rd edition already in a series of global mental health summits that aim to put mental healt...

In their recent  comment  titled “Beyond behaviour as individual choice: A call to expand understandings around social science in health research”, Nakkeeran and colleagues reminded the social science and health community about the need to scrutinize and address the underlying structural and institutional factors that perpetuate “behavio...

Norway plays a leadership role in the global pandemic response as co-lead of the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) and chair of the World Trade Organization TRIPS Council. The country is also a key negotiator in discussions on new financing instruments for pandemic preparedness and response. In addition, Norway is one of the five coun...

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, due...

The WHO defines health as: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This is amply illustrated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has had and continues to have significant adverse impacts on health, even for populations without infection or the disease. Even if the situ...

With the second wave of Covid-19 in India having spiraled totally out of control, perhaps this is not the ideal time to reflect on some of the more questionable ‘control strategies’ adopted by the country in the earlier days of the pandemic. Still, in this blog we aim to examine one of the restrictive measures adopted by many Indian states- ...

Approximately 491 days ago, the first cluster of COVID-19 cases was reported to the WHO and the infectious agent, a novel coronavirus, was identified. Since then we’ve expanded our knowledge of geography and added words and phrases such as WFH (working from home to the uninitiated), PPE, flattening the curve, contact tracing, herd immunity, lo...