Sitting in my apartment in Geneva, my thoughts inevitably return to the streets of Quetta, Balochistan (Pakistan) where I led a network of community health workers in Quetta Block who went door to door to raise awareness and immunize children against poliomyelitis. Polio is 99% eradicated but remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Following […]
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We must increase people’s access to and willingness to take COVID-19 vaccines
Recent research published by the journal Nature shows that people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are more willing to take COVID-19 vaccines than their counterparts in high-income countries. The researchers analysed 15 COVID-19 vaccine acceptance surveys involving 44,260 respondents across 13 countries – Burkina Faso, Colombia, India, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra […]
Beyond health: Connecting art, COVID-19 and the Sustainable Development Goals in the rural plains of Nepal
Art and the SDGs is a public engagement project between artisans from the Janakpur Women’s Development Centre (a centre of Mithila art and culture) in the southern plains of Nepal, researchers at UCL Institute for Global Health and the United Nations in Nepal to promote dialogue between students and artisans about local meanings of […]
Colonialism in speech-language pathology: Moving forward
How we communicate is one way through which we tell the world who we are. The vocabulary, syntax, and speech sounds we use tell others where we are from, our age, our gender, our socioeconomic background, and our cultural associations. The language learning process initiates us into our communities by implicitly teaching us the […]
Lessons from COVID-19: Strengthening the public health system in India or accelerating privatisation?
When Manisha’s husband passed away in a private hospital from Maharashtra state in October 2020 she was given a handwritten bill of Rs 14 lakh (18,892 USD). The hospital withheld his body for ten hours till the dues were settled. Sandeep Dhande was given a bill of 1.5 lakh (2,040 USD) on a piece […]
Stigma related to COVID-19 threatens to divide humanity further
. The global spread of COVID-19 has been accompanied by a deeply troubling rise of stigma. Stigma related to COVID-19 included stereotyping, blaming and ostracizing groups or individuals that were infected or associated with the disease. This pattern of stigmatization has been fueled by political rhetoric, inequity, and mistrust . Many of these stem from […]
Should take-home medication for opioid use disorder become the norm?
The impact of COVID-19 on people with pre-existing health problems has been devastating. To speak of any benefit of the COVID crisis for them is perhaps heretical. But an important COVID-induced change in the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) is a crisis response with demonstrated benefits. In many countries, people living with OUD […]
Social protection in the time of COVID-19
Pandemics are highly inequitable. They impose a disproportionate burden on those at the lower end of the income distribution. In the case of COVID-19, control efforts through social distancing and population lockdowns have brought additional deprivations on vulnerable populations. In low- and middle- income countries (LMIC) and elsewhere, the slowdown in economic activity has […]
Battling COVID-19 in a war zone: a field doctor’s point of view from Yemen
Yemen has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2015. In June 2021, President Joe Biden announced his administration would donate 500 million doses of COVID vaccines to low-income countries. Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed shortly afterwards with an announcement of the British donating 100 million excess vaccines. These measures were celebrated around […]
Challenges in accessing care for Palestinian cancer patients in Gaza during the COVID-19 crisis
While media headlines this year captured the destruction in Gaza following the Israel-Gaza hostilities and the humanitarian impact of war, less is known about the daily battles faced by cancer patients in Gaza. This blog intends to specifically describe the persisting challenges in accessing care, that mounted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which are seldom […]