Kenya has recently taken a major step towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by introducing the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF). SHIF replaces the National Hospital Insurance Fund and is intended to provide more comprehensive access and coverage. While social health insurance can help countries attain UHC, international experience suggests that implementing such reforms is […]
Category: Health System
From Texts to Triage: The WhatsApp Clinic Experience
In a bustling paediatric clinic in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, the day begins not only with appointments but also with a steady stream of WhatsApp messages from anxious parents. The screen flickers as a mother text for advice, the urgency in her tone unmistakable: her 4-year-old son has a high-grade fever and refuses to […]
Public health tragedy of the triple train accident
June 2, 2023, was a sad day, globally. Three trains crashed into each other in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. As of June, the triple train accident has led to 288 deaths and 1,100 injured people, making it the most significant such casualty of the decade. The aftermath has been further tragic. There […]
The democratisation of health care: will Kenya be left behind?
“Young man, I would be dead without this device.” Mr. Ngatia[1] said as he shook my hand vigorously. Mr. Ngatia was in his early 50s and had spent much of his life in Korogocho slum in Nairobi. I met him about seven years ago when I was leading a community-based health research project on […]
Science, society & politics: being future ready
In the last nine months, COVID-19 has proved to be unlike any other outbreak the world has seen in the past century. Its impact is beyond health and is expected to last years – if not more. We saw first-hand how ill-prepared we were to deal with the pandemic. Even countries like USA and […]
Keeping equitable childhood cancer care on the global health agenda
September is the month for childhood cancer awareness, a time to shine the light on a disease which is often not part of the global health discourse. There are approximately 300,000 new cases of childhood cancers diagnosed each year globally. Despite relatively high cure rates for some cancers when detected early, survival rates remain […]
The vulnerable are here too: Insights from Nigeria
While interviewing patients, family members and healthcare professionals for my research in Nigeria, I interviewed a 70-year-old woman who has been wheelchair-bound for almost 13 years after having a stroke. Her older son lives outside of Nigeria and she currently lives in her own house with her youngest son and daughter-in-law. The vulnerable woman […]
“I can’t breathe” in Kurdistan: Oxygen shortage & COVID-19
On the early hours of June 10th, a nine-year-old boy from Kifri in Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) died from apparent respiratory distress. His family told media outlets that the district general hospital he was taken to did not have enough oxygen supplies to save his life. They also claimed that his father had to […]
COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines: Enhancing Testing Productivity
The Philippines moved quickly to expand COVID-19 testing capacity, but much of this new capacity remains idle. Emphasis must now shift to increasing productivity, particularly by improving the flow of samples to the laboratories. Preceding entry: Scaling Up Capacity for COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines When the first COVID-19 case was detected in […]
The COVID-19 tracking apps ecosystem unraveled: critical issues for global health
In March and April 2020, an ecosystem of tracing apps suddenly emerged, presenting digital solutions as indispensable for winning the battle against Covid-19. A few months later, the techno-optimism has subsided drastically, ranging from a perception that apps are problematic surveillance tools (Russia, Bahrain and Kuwait) or ineffective (Singapore, France and Iceland) to the […]