Well-intentioned Harm

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolance if they lack understanding. " - Albert Camus GLOBAL HEALTH GONE WRONG

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This is a campaign by The Asia Safe Abortion Partnership addressing common myths and stigma surrounding abortion in Asia.

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UN’s Post-2015 Agenda: Ending Poverty ‘In All Its Forms and Dimensions’

“The United Nations members from 193 nations endorsed a “historic” roadmap Sunday to tackle poverty and hunger, promote well-being and safeguard the environment over the next 15 years. The 30-page “agenda for sustainable development” is expected to guide policy and funding after the deadline for achieving the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted in 2000, expires by the end of this year.

“The Summit will chart a new era of sustainable development in which poverty will be eradicated, prosperity shared and the core drivers of climate change tackled,” Ban said in the statement. “Critically, the summit will also contribute to achieve a meaningful agreement in the COP21 in Paris in December.”

Funds for the 2015-2030 development goals will be provided by rich nations and developing countries as part of a deal finalized earlier this month in Ethiopia. Under the agreement, the donor nations agreed to set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development aid.

According to a 2014 U.N. report, while the global target for reducing poverty by half was achieved five years ahead of schedule and the number of poor people -- those living on less than $1.25 a day -- had halved to 18 percent in 2010 from 36 percent of the population in 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty in the sub-Saharan region increased to 414 million in 2010 from 290 million in 1990.”

Excerpts from http://www.ibtimes.com/uns-post-2015-agenda-ending-poverty-all-its-forms-dimensions-2035433 

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What is global health?

“An area for study, research, and practice that places a priority on  improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide.   Global health emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and  solutions; involves many disciplines within and beyond the health  sciences and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration; and is a synthesis  of population-based prevention with individual-level clinical care.”

                                               -Koplan JP et al. Lancet 2009; 373: 1993–95. 

“Global Health is collaborative trans-national research and action for promoting health for all.”

                               -Beaglehole & Bonita Global Health Action 2010; 3:5142.

(Image from https://www.coursera.org/course/globalhealthoverview)

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Just a reminder that if there is any particular health topic including social determinants, politics, history, and anything else you can think of, that you would like me to do a post on, send me a message!

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“Part of the trouble with public health is, if it works well it’s invisible…Nobody notices that we don’t have a TB epidemic so it becomes easy to think it is not important.

Raisa Debbar, The Globe and Mail, 2003

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Stress no more

A big heart-felt congratulations to same-sex couples in the United States today!

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“And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn’t care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He’s still going to make these hikes, he’d insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you’re saying that their lives matter less than some others’, and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.”

— Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World

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Picture from www.cbc.ca (Thought I’d use a picture of a black doctor with a white child. We have more than enough pictures the other way around in global health).

Health Care Professionals to Launch Federal Election Campaign for National Drug Coverage

A number of high-profile agencies including Canadian Doctors for Medicare and Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario are coming together to urge all parties to commit to a national drug coverage plan. The Canadian federal election will take place on October 19 this year.

What? Drug coverage problems in CANADA? Land of maple syrup and free healthcare? How could it be? Well, according to a press release by Canadian Doctors for Medicare, Canada is the only developed  country with a universal health care system that does not include universal prescription drug coverage. We pay some of the highest prescription drug prices in the world and more than 3 million Canadians each year can’t afford to fill their prescriptions.

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Hi, I was wondering if you or your followers know anything about Masters of Science in Global Health programs vs MPH with global health concentration? Thank you!

Hey, shout-out-love! Thanks for the question!

I actually spoke to a student studying epidemiology to see if he could answer this question. The conclusion we both reached was that it really depends on the school. For instance, a look at McMaster’s global health masters program shows you can choose the area you want to study in detail and if you want to have a thesis based masters or a course based one. On the other hand, University of Toronto only offers a public health masters but you can have a global health emphasis. I can’t seem to think of any school which offers both options…(Sorry for the Canadian examples, I’m not sure which areas you were thinking of applying to.)

I’m also going to add my own two cents based on experience. Global health is still a new concept and so many global health programs are still young but public health is an old, established field. I would advise you to do your research carefully if you want to pursue a global health program because many schools still think of global health as international health and so, follow a charity-based model. Some of the best global health universities include Emory, Yale, and London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. I would recommend finding a particular global health topic that interests you and doing a literature survey to see which institutions publish the most in that area. You can also shoot me a message and I might be able to name a couple of places.

I hope that helps. Followers, any other ideas?

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Images from "Moral Imagination: The Missing Component in Global Health" by Solomon R. Benetar

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L’Oréal owned Softsheen.Carson has various haircare and grooming lines catered toward people of colour.

While shopping at the Kenyan supermarket chain, Tuskys, I was quite excited to find a counterpart to Fair and Lovely, the skin-lightening cream that both my brown mother and I grew up with. Was this a sign of changing times? Could dark skin finally be gaining mainstream social acceptance? Upon doing more research, I found that Dark and Lovely is owned by Softsheen.Carson which is owned by L’Oréal. Yes, this is the same company that was found guilty in 2009 for not including women of colour in its ads and for having a racist recruitment strategy in 2007.

One thing that’s important to remember is that no matter how philanthropic or progressive the message of a brand is, at the end of the day, the company is there to make money. Having a brand that caters to women of colour is simply a clever way to target new groups of consumers. We can’t rely on giant companies to be inclusive.

That being said, has anyone tried any Dark and Lovely products? Would you recommend them? Or is it just the same formula as light skin-targeted care products packaged in a different bottle?

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A picture board at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya showing the ophthalmology department’s outreach programs.

Notice how it’s all local Kenyan doctors and nurses and no foreigners? Providing service and care needs to come from the people themselves, those who best know what their needs are, the gaps in the system and how to address them.

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Binyavanga Wainaina on aid, power and the politics of development in Africa – video

The Kenyan writer best known for his celebrated Granta essay – How to write about Africa – talks to Eliza Anyangwe about how the notion of 'development' and other words incubated in the west fail to capture the reality of Africa. 'The obsession with the essay has become very interesting because it provokes liberal guilt: what can we do better, but never asks how can we restructure power arrangements, which is what Africa needs,' says Wainaina.  He goes on to talk about the portrayal of Africa as 'diabolically corrupt' and, using Kenya as an example, explains how those stereotypes feed the development industry and everything it does. Do you agree with him?

“These days when the word “community” is used, it means someone utterly powerless upon which power is being imposed.”

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Honest headlines: Global health version

The advice4parenting blog (only lame parents write out “four”) has wisdom to share. “Preadolescence,” a suburban parent laments, “is a tumultuous time in the human life cycle…(Your tween) is faced with peer pressure to try alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs…he is moody…and anxious.” And yet, the National Union of Teachers in the UK, along with the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) have decided that ’tis the best age to send two of these hormonal bundles of joy to Bangladesh to “investigate the barriers to education.” That’s right, let’s throw these kids into a whole new cultural setting to tackle what Masters and PhD students have been researching for decades. But they’re going to a developing country! Even the white kids from a developed country know more than those “wretched societies.” Besides, they will be carefully selected from the best of the best.”  Um, ignoring your racism, let me point out that the form only asks for the candidates’ names, ages, and sex. There is nothing to measure the candidate’s sensitivity to other cultures, an understanding of the issue of education, the list goes on.

Having taken on one of the Millennium Development Goals, these overachievers (“ideally a boy and a girl” because we have quotas you fill y’know?) will travel back after 7 days (does that include travel time?). After having their lives changed, they will speak with politicians and the media to promote the GCE campaign i.e. ask rich people for funding.

This is just one program by one organization by one developed country sending young people to developing countries. I wonder how much it’s costing the organization, although the amount will be reimbursed through the donations in the long-run, no doubt. I wonder how the girls who they plan on visiting in Dhaka will feel. I wonder if these kids will stay at a 5-star hotel. I wonder if their parents will be proud. I wonder if one of them will go on to get awards for their “philanthropic” work. I wonder if these kids will have any idea that they are pawns in neocolonialism, that they are doing what their British ancestors have been doing for ages, going to other countries and exploiting them, through wealth, fame, or otherwise. I wonder if any of them will look back on this experience and critically think about it. I wonder if they will read this blog post, condescending as it is, and maybe change their minds.

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“Good intentions are insufficient as a premise from which we can decide to pursue these global health projects. Just because we have good intentions doesn’t mean we have the experience, the knowledge, the breadth of worldview to actually contribute something of value.”

Kelly Anderson, National Officer Global Health Education, Canadian Federation of Medical Sudents

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“We are engaging in a monologue instead of a dialogue.”

Researcher Dr. Helen Dimaras, in reference to the Western silos, rampant in global health