The Animas river in Colorado, the Moskva river south of Moscow, and Tianjin. What do these three geographic areas have in common? They have all been deeply affected by industrial hazards in August 2015. 5 August: In Colorado, agents from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally unleashed 3m gallons of toxic mine waste into the […]
Category: Global health
Edward Fitzgerald: Celebrating global health on world humanitarian day
Lifebox Foundation is celebrating surgery and anaesthesia humanitarian heroes for WHD. Follow our #HumanitarianHeroes campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to find out more. When I was 4 years old I had grommets inserted in both ears—small plastic tubes through the eardrum to help resolve an infection. Around the same time I had a mole […]
Aser García Rada: Providing humanitarian aid at one of the oldest refugee camps in the world
During four weeks this June, along with other colleagues from the Spanish and the Austrian Red Cross, I was deployed as a delegate of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to respond to a massive influx of asylum seekers in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in […]
Joe Knight: Extreme weather and food supply shortages
It’s a given that Obama will never agree with Putin on Ukraine nor Ahmadinejad on nuclear proliferation. There are however, some common enemies that are supposed to draw the warring nations of the earth into one corner and demand something like a “global” response. These are usually issues of health and the environment, where the […]
Zosia Kmietowicz: One policy to reduce sugar intake—what would you do?
The anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig blew through town this week to film a documentary with chef Jamie Oliver, but stopped off on the way to take part in a panel discussion on the white stuff, which he launched with a talk entitled “Processed Food: An experiment that failed.” Lustig, who is professor of paediatrics at […]
Arthy Santhakumar: Accelerating health equity through equitable access to health information
As we await consensus on the new sustainable development goals (SDGs), we are reminded of what united the international community in the years approaching the millennium—the need to reduce inequality globally. Universal health coverage (UHC) – as put forward by the World Health Organization—was identified as “the single most powerful concept that public health has […]
Daniel Cooper: On the frontline at the Kerry Town treatment unit
At a time when public and media interest is waning, the Ebola epidemic in west Africa shows no signs of ending. With Guinea and Sierra Leone still reporting new cases on a weekly basis, hopes of Liberia being declared Ebola free have also been dashed with six new cases reported since the end of June. […]
David McCoy: Divestment is no grand gesture
According to Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, the Guardian’s “Keep in the Ground” campaign to promote divestment from fossil fuel companies is merely a “grand gesture” that can be made only once. At one level, he is right. The financial impact of the Wellcome Trust selling off its shares in fossil fuel companies […]
Tamsin Lillie: Strengthening human resources in Malawi, the world’s poorest country
Malawi, a country in Southern Africa, was recently acknowledged by the World Bank as the poorest country in the world, with the average gross national income being just $250. Its health system is in desperate need of human resources; there are just two doctors for every 100,000 people. Most doctors work in the tertiary referral […]
The earthquake in Nepal: Surgeons’ dispatch from Barhabise
The massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred 77 km northwest of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, on 25 April 2015 left more than 8000 people dead and 16 000 injured. The district of Sindhupalchok, where more than 3000 people were lost, was struck particularly hard. At the request of the Japanese government, disaster relief medical […]