Today, November 25th, is the first of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. This UN-led campaign ends on December 10th, Human Rights Day, thereby aptly reminding us that violence against women and girls is part and parcel of brutal disrespect for human dignity in general. Now, most of you might wonder why a yearly campaign for a...

It had been exactly one year since the last time I was in Honduras. I was honestly glad to enjoy the green landscape as the airplane landed in San Pedro Sula airport. Little did I know that my excitement was going to change into something more ominous, on my way to the hotel where I was about to spend my quarantine. It didn’t take long to not...

“Hey, aren’t you afraid of dying from the coronavirus? No! I’m afraid of dying dismembered and be blamed for it”, a Chilean cartoonist tweeted a few days ago. And that is more than just a perception for hundreds of thousands of women across Latin America who flocked to the streets on Sunday, in commemoration of International Women’s D...

For reasons largely beyond my control, my life and career path took me back to one of the countries belonging to the Northern Triangle  in Central America, Honduras, and a new home in Mexico City. I am perfectly aware of where I live and work, in the most violent region of the world. As I landed in Tegucigalpa, recently, I realized I hadn’t s...

In 2018, a record 70.8 million people around the world  fled their homes searching for safe haven, 2.8 million people were new refugees and asylum-seekers. Of 41.3 million internally displaced people, around 13.6 million were newly displaced last year. Ten million were stateless, without access to basic rights such as education, health, and d...

While most people living in the Americas these days wake up to watch soccer matches of their all-time favorite country teams (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico…), we Nicaraguans wake up to count the dead and the missing from the night before. Living under siege has become the ‘new normal’ since a nation-wide social uprising started on April 18th. ...

On April 20th afternoon, I decided to join one of the peaceful protests in my country. We marched approximately 2 km towards the cathedral in Managua, waving Nicaraguan flags, banging pans and pots or whatever could make noise, and yelling out loud “We’re not afraid anymore!”. We were protesting against the social security reforms announce...

On a cold Monday (November 13th), I had the opportunity to attend the 2017 Academy of Medical Sciences and The Lancet International Health Lecture, by Dr. Samuel Myers, who is Director of the Planetary Health Alliance and affiliated to the Harvard School of Public Health. The lecture took place in London, one of my favourite cities. In the very ...

The ninth edition of the World Health Summit (WHS) was held during October 15th -17th, in a nice former cinema hall in the city of East Berlin, built in the early 1960s and with a rather appropriate name for the occasion, “Kosmos”.  This year, the event was attended by 2,000 participants from 100 countries, all aiming “to improve healthca...

Every year, the World Mental Health Day is celebrated on October 10th. This year’s theme is Mental Health in the Workplace. The WHO acknowledges that an adverse working environment can lead to negative mental and physical outcomes, while also highlighting depression and anxiety as conditions that hamper productivity (with a substantial impact ...

The Sixth Regional Meeting on the Right to Health and Health Systems took place in Santiago de Chile from 6th to 8th of September. This event gathered country representatives (ministers and vice-ministers of health), academics and other stakeholders from different countries that are part of the World Bank Initiative Salud Derecho.  This is an e...

Two weeks of Trump’s presidency have passed, and many of us Americans—proud inhabitants of the continent consisting of 35 sovereign states including the United States of America, the República Federativa do Brasil and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos—are watching his reign of intolerance and hatred unfold with fear and disbelief. And while I�...

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio (“Rio 2016”) are the first Olympic Games taking place in Latin America since 1968 in Mexico (not exactly a resounding success, we recall); it’s also the first time such an event is held in South America. People around the world are eagerly following the games on TV and social media, and Latin Americans are n...

Zika virus is making headlines all around the world. In Latin America, Zika caused little less than a turmoil. In less than a year, perception veered from one more dengue-like discomfort to that of a devilish threat, particularly so since its possible association with microcephaly. Not unsurprisingly in times when health is increasingly seen as ...

It’s over a year now since the third global symposium on health systems research took place in Cape Town. At the symposium, the science and practice of people-centred health systems took center stage. Almost 2000 participants represented 125 countries in Cape Town, so it clearly was a global conference. The 2014 edition of the Emerging Voice...

On April 10 and 11, all eyes in the Western Hemisphere will be on Panama City, hosting the Summit of the Americas. This event has been taking place every three years since 1994, and gathers around 34 members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to discuss present and future challenges of the region that comprises North, Central and South...

Last November the Economic Forum released The Global Gender Gap Report 2014. The report is an attempt to measure the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: (1) health and survival; (2) educational attainment; (3) economic participation and opportunity; and (4) political empowerment. In the Latin American/Caribbean region, 14 o...