Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts –William Bruce Cameron Do vaccination campaigns increase immunization rates in young children? Do home-visiting programs for new mothers increase exclusive breastfeeding? Studies designed to answer these questions are known as health impact evaluations and are key for global health […]
Category: International development
“Using my Voice” to Decolonize Global Health
Last week I watched the Decolonize Global Health online conference at the University of Edinburgh , where Madhukar Pai, Director of Global Health at McGill University, said that the bright spot he sees in all this is the youth can see through the BS. And by BS, he means the “colonialism” in global health […]
More Than a Word: Neo-Colonialism in Today’s Vocabulary.
Everyone has once been found guilty for using these words. Developing countries, third world countries, poor countries, and more. Terminology so embedded in academia and international affairs, yet so full of stigma. Systemic violence is apparent throughout global health and often expresses itself in the way we express global health. Language defines how we, […]
The White Savior Industrial Complex in Global Health
Introduction: Global health, once an obscure field of practice and research, is rapidly gaining prominence. Many training institutions have responded to the high demand for a global health “experience” by providing short-term forays into exotic locales. This phenomenon can be dangerous, feeding into what writer Teju Cole described as the White Savior Industrial Complex (WSIC). […]
Violence against doctors in India: faltering justice systems, crippled health systems and broken dreams
Early this week India woke up to the news of a mob of “so called” family members of a patient, who had come in trucks and pelted stones in a Kolkata medical college alleging delay in handing over dead body . In the ensuing violence against doctors, a junior doctor suffered severe head injuries […]
Short-termism: The bane of health sector development in Nigeria
We all love quick wins. Quick wins represent our aspiration of implementing interventions that are relatively easy to achieve and hopefully impactful. Short-termism is a situation where the focus is on short-term results at the expense of long-term interests. Considering the modest progress made in strengthening Nigeria’s chronically weak health systems despite successive Government and donor efforts, we need some […]
Beyond profit and convenience: towards humanitarian dedication and conceptual coherence in Global Health
The growing presence of China as a forceful proponent in Global Health is beginning to receive proper attention. There can be no doubt that the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI) of China has begun to define the range of realistic future scenarios for individual and concerted action. These scenarios should simultaneously account for both universalizing and […]
We need to question all ‘donor fads’, not only performance-based financing
By Shola Molemodile I applaud Paul and colleagues, authors of the recent BMJ Global Health paper on performance-based financing in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), for being bold. We need more daring authors in health systems and global health, who are unafraid to state the obvious as these authors have done. While many may be […]
Rethinking performance-based financing: sustainability must be part of the debate
By Priscilla N Owusu In the recent BMJ Global Health article Paul et al critique the notion that performance-based financing (PBF) is an effective approach to improving health service delivery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). They do so by highlighting concerns about the mixed evidence supporting the efficacy of the intervention. Using Rwanda as […]
The baby and the bathwater: can we have a more constructive debate on performance-based financing?
By Godelieve van Heteren Paul et al’s critique In a recent paper in BMJ Global Health, 24 authors (Paul et al) – the majority of whom are French-speaking academics and consultants from northern countries – declared that performance-based financing (PBF) in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) health systems needs an urgent rethink. They claim it is […]