In last week’s IHP newsletter intro, Kristof wondered  what “the real story” is. Because in the past few weeks, I too felt really delusional, I decided to go for a reality check – what, indeed, is the real story? Phenomenological accounts of delusions suggest that delusions are not nonsense, but more adequately understood as a differ...

Another special day to celebrate! Another occasion for nice words like “Hope away from home: health care access and solution for refugees”:  WHO and UNHCR ( the UN Refugee Agency) are partners in this year’s World Refugee Day campaign  about “the inclusion and solutions for refugees to ensure their access to health services anywhere, anyt...

When I come across a sentence like  – hold your breath – this one, “achieving systemic transformation under the banner of climate justice requires that we deconstruct power relations and gender norms as colonial social constructs from an intersectional and community-based perspective”, I tend to grab an extra cup of coffee. How shall I “w...

The world is in a dire state and everybody is talking about it  – and I want to just say a few words about how we do this. The Wintermanifest  (published at the start of the Omicron wave in Belgium) questioned the perceived dominance of virologists and epidemiologists in the battle against the Corona virus in Belgium. The manifest was main...

The first anniversary of the C-thing has not gone unnoticed. Anniversaries provide moments to take stock, look back and think about what might come next. Last Spring, the early enthusiasm for transformational change was more tangible in the air than aerosols -but now, on our way to 3 million casualties worldwide, it seems only artists and philo...

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the 19th WPA World Congress of Psychiatry in Lisbon (21-24 August).  In case you didn’t know, WPA stands for ‘World Psychiatric Association’. But as we all know (or should know), there is no health without mental health, and I was therefore proud to represent ITM at this Congress! Back in ...

“The reality on the ground” is an expression that refers to the state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as one might wish them to be. Policies and principles are  guidelines and rules to help bring about a ‘wanted’ reality  – how things “ought” to be (at least from the point of view of decision makers). One of the...

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 hea...

Last week, David Graeber passed away, way too early, unfortunately. In this short article, some ITM staff dwell on what David Graeber meant to them, and what the global health community could and perhaps should learn from him. Feel free to weigh in as well under the blog. “Yes, we must mourn David Graeber. Thinking about his work is proba...

On 23 October, 150 international experts gathered at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp for a symposium to take stock on progress on the way to ‘health for all’. Some elephants were spotted in the room. Might one of them be a doctor?   Prof Bart Criel, the initiator of the symposium, rightly pointed out that the Alma-Ata Dec...

Last Saturday (26 May), the very last (side-)event of the World Health Assembly in Geneva was about one of the most embarrassing challenges in international health work: “#AidToo: Sexual exploitation in international cooperation”. #AidToo is a sub-section of the #MeToo movement which definitely needs no introduction, as the ripples it has ca...

Decent people are outraged about the behavior of aid workers in Haiti some seven years ago. Of course, this is triggered by a deeper sentiment – the unease we all have about the state of affairs in the world. In a western world beleaguered by identity crises, climate change, refugees and new values, a scandal in the humanitarian world helps to...