May 15, 2024
Fair Taxation: Urgent Call for action in G20 and UN
Oxfam’s February 2024 analysis reveals a troubling trend: the wealthiest 1% in G20 countries are benefiting from significantly reduced tax rates, widening the gap between the rich and the rest. This alarming disparity, coupled with a decline in democracy, underscores the urgent need for policy reform. As finance ministers convene in São Paulo, they must…
May 14, 2024
Stolen Wisdom: Ending Western Exploitation of Indigenous Knowledge
As of May 2024, the Diplomatic Conference on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge unfolds in Geneva, a crucial conversation is taking place: how to end the long-standing exploitation of traditional knowledge and genetic resources by wealthier nations. For centuries, indigenous peoples have been the guardians of a vast repository of knowledge about medicinal plants,…
April 10, 2024
Climate mortality: From rural Indian Women to Seattle’s homeless men
The climate crisis creates a tragic reality across the globe: women in India are succumbing to extreme heat, while homeless individuals, predominantly men, in Seattle are dying from extreme cold. Rohini Krishnamurthy, in the Indian Down to Earth magazine, sheds light on a troubling gender disparity in India coping with extreme temperatures. Since 2005, there…
March 8, 2024
Gaza – “Not a normal war”
No war is the same. But the Gaza War is particularly unprecedented – on many fronts – the enormous death toll, targeting of children, intentional famine, unprecedented damage to health workers and facilities, emerging threats of infectious disease outbreaks. Several recent articles and posts underscore how horrific this war has been, from the brutality of…
February 10, 2024
More years of schooling improves all-cause mortality globally – Lancet
A systematic review and meta-analysis by the IHME-CHAIN collaborators (Lancet 23 January 2024) demonstrated that increased “years of schooling had a significant and consistent effect on all-cause mortality risk and that the protective effect of education persisted for female and male individuals, across all age groups, and all levels of Socio-demographic Index of the country…
Defunding UNWRA in Gaza is ‘collective punishment’ – Lancet & Health Justice Organizations
Health and political leaders globally have condemned defunding of UNRWA, the principle lifeline for the people of Gaza. Sharmila Devi, in the current issue of Lancet, quotes UN leaders and aid agency leaders (including WHO) “no other entity has the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2·2 million people in Gaza…
February 6, 2024
The Equity Imperative: Confronting HPV Vaccine Apartheid to Combat Cervical Cancer
The fight against cervical cancer faces a critical juncture. Despite the availability of a life-saving vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which is known to reduce cervical cancer cases significantly, a stark divide remains between high-income countries and lower-middle-income countries in vaccine access. Professor Linda Eckert, from the Department of ObGyn and the Department of…
January 30, 2024
USAID’s $9.5B supply chain vision unraveled at the expense of lives worldwide and billions of dollars wasted
In 2015, USAID unveiled the largest contract in its history, aimed at transforming health supply chains in lower-income countries. It has not gone according to plan. In 2017, it was clear the project was failing. During its worst quarter, only 7% of its shipments arrived at their destinations on time and in full. Project leaders scrambled as multiple…
January 27, 2024
Tim Schwab & “The Bill Gates Problem” Town Hall Seattle Podcast
Tim Schwab, author of the recently published “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the myth of the good billionaire,” headlined a Seattle Town Hall event in December 2024 sponsored by the Community Alliance for Global Justice. In this podcast of the event, Tim explains how Bill Gates’ uses his foundation as a vehicle for unaccountable…
Wars are never necessary: Gaza is the best example
This short Lancet piece by Souza, Buss, and Alcazar notes that since the Gaza war began in October 2023, “nothing has been resolved and all impasses remain. The costs of lives lost and survivors’ lives destroyed forever are immense. The billions of dollars spent on killing so far could have saved lives, fed and immunised…
