The shaman and I alternate. He circles the mother in labour, burning plants and ringing bells to release the negative energy in the room. When contractions start, it is our turn: and eventually together we deliver the baby. Traditional healers are indispensable to indigenous communities in Indonesia. Even in severe medical cases, many patients […]
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As stakeholders, researchers, and young people with lived experience on the streets who have been participants in and beneficiaries of research and members of research teams, we believe in and support the critical role research plays in enabling evidence-based decision-making to transform the health and social and economic well-being of children and youth in […]
Reducing avoidable death – immediate care is essential
A short while ago I was in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, a country immersed in a longstanding civil war. I had moved fast to get there. A double bombing had been triggered in a populated area and nearly 500 victims had been involved. At least 25% had died, most before they reached hospital. […]
Climate crisis and health: a call for papers
In September 2021, a few weeks before the Climate Conference (COP26) in the United Kingdom, BMJ Global Health joined more than 200 other medical and public health journals to note that “the greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5°C and […]
Visa discrimination: moving beyond global health
Visa discrimination has recently become a major topic in global health circles. This is following a spate of discriminatory policies in 2022, which specifically targeted African health professionals being denied visas to global health conferences in the Global North. A recent article in BMJ detailed such cases leading to greater calls for hosting such […]
Resurrecting a lost obstetric skill to reduce global maternal death
The incidence of having a baby in the bottom-down (“breech”) position at the end of pregnancy is about 1 in 25. The “Term Breech Trial” (TBT) is a landmark randomised controlled trial that changed the management of breech birth since its publication in 2000. It concluded that a planned Caesarean birth is safer for […]
The right to health, not equity, challenges intersectional disadvantage in global health
Assuring healthy lives and encouraging wellbeing for all people at all ages is the bold sustainable development goal for global health. But to accomplish this, we must first understand who is being left behind and why. It is generally acknowledged that intersectionality is a particularly effective analytical tool for understanding individual and population-level disadvantage. […]
Book review: How rotten is drug regulation in India?
Over the past decade, India’s drug exports have doubled to over $24 billion per year. While its long-established and rapidly growing generics industry has earned the country the accolade of ‘pharmacy of the world’, Indian companies are now also running clinical trials and developing new innovative products, including one of the world’s first nasal […]
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When I started practicing as an internal medicine physician years ago, I had many thoughts about what my future in patient care might hold. I can confidently say that flying to Egypt for the international climate conference COP27 was not one of them! And yet, mid-career, I found myself in Sharm El-Sheikh, encountering images […]
FIFA’s anti-one love LGBTQ+ rights armband policy in the World Cup Qatar 2022: what could this mean to Global Health?
The One Love armband, which includes a heart containing colours representative of all backgrounds, was proposed by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Working Group in 2020 in support of inclusion of people from diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions, including but not limited to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+). […]