Six years are left to meet the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a ringing bell for the upcoming High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), taking place at the UN Headquarters, in New York, from 8 to 17 July 2024. In the most recent Sustainable Development Report 2024 by the UN Sustainable Developme...

The vibrant city of Dubai (UAE) recently hosted the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference,  more commonly known as “COP28”. The conference took place from 30 November to 12 December at Expo City, Dubai. COP28 brought once again global attention to environmental issues – one of the main advantages of this annual gathering – but the...

Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) marked its 10-year anniversary in 2020. That’s to say, 10 years and 7 cohorts of Emerging Voices, or about 300 EVs as we like to call ourselves. The EV2020 venture has been nothing short of anniversary dreams… and just a bit of drama: a global pandemic, virtual networking/conferencing, and a change in...

A recent WHO report noted that one in 100 deaths is by suicide. Countries around the world need to improve suicide prevention strategies. That includes the Eastern Mediterranean region, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) even if the country (with 6.4 suicides per 100,000 people (2021) ) doesn’t do too bad, compared with some other countries i...

Last year, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its tiny 83,600Km2 of land and a little under 10 million residents, ranked 56th out of 195 countries on the (now somewhat controversial) John’s Hopkins Global Health Security index. The country was labeled as  as ‘more prepared’ in the face of disaster – in between ‘least prepared’ and...

The novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has sent the world into a state of panic leading, among others, to closure of international borders and the threat of another global economic meltdown. The global health security crisis also tests the resilience and functioning of health systems all over the world. In less than five months, COVI...

At the time of writing this article, more than 4 million people globally have fallen prey to the novel Corona virus, with over 248 thousand deaths, and the end is not in sight. According to the latest WHO situation report (as of May 11), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has entered the community transmission phase of the pandemic with 18, 198 con...

Last weekend, Dr. Farida Al Hosani, Director of the Communicable Diseases Department at Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health, reported in a televised interview that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had confirmed 13 cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). According to reports from the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, the out...

Last week we participated in the 2024 Emerging Voices venture here in Nagasaki, Japan – respectively as an EV from the new cohort and as a facilitator. A visit to FARM UNZEN, a center for equine-assisted therapy in the Nagasaki prefecture, was the backdrop for this article. We were amazed by the innovative use of horses here in Japan. Bac...