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Global Health Justice

Tag: decolonizehealth

Re-imagining foreign aid

Post categories: Reimagining Aid Post tags:
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Farah Stockman in her NY Times editorial decries the chaos and devastation from cuts in US foreign aid, but also calls for re-imagining a foreign aid that addresses serious flaws inherent in the current forms of aid.  We know that local groups (especially under-funded government health systems) are far more cost-effective and attuned to what communities need – and stay long after foreign workers depart. Cutting out the middlemen is essential, and more cost-effective – as leaders in the global…

Moving Beyond Allyship in the Decolonization of Global Health

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The University of Washington School of Public Health’s Alison Wiyeh, MD, MSc (PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology with a concentration in public policy and management) and Ferdinand Mukumbang, PhD, MS (Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health) recently published a correspondence in The Lancet, “Global South leaders should strengthen strategic capacity“. The commentary describes the limitations of relying on Global North allyship in the decolonization of global health. Wiyeh and Mukumbang’s argument is particularly salient following current…

Chiquita guilty of funding terrorists in Colombia

Post categories: Social Determinants of Health Structural Violence Post tags:
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A South Florida jury just found Chiquita Brands liable for killings by right-wing paramilitary death squads that the the company financed in their banana plantations. Chiquita, formerly the United Fruit Company (UFC),  has a long history of deadly repression against workers. The New Orleans-based multinational has long monopolized land and markets and controlled governments throughout Latin America. UFC was implicated in massacres in Colombia, the overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Arbens of Guatemala, and propped up many so-called “banana…

Tim Schwab & “The Bill Gates Problem” Town Hall Seattle Podcast

Post categories: Philanthrocapitalism Reimagining Aid Post tags:
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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 personal power and influence, using taxpayers dollars. He describes how  dogmatic belief in the primacy of the private sector and their patent interests and the…

Hollow Promises and True Adversaries

Post categories: Decolonization Post tags:
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Decolonization in global health has gained popularity as a trendy topic, but the language of equity and justice falls short when it comes to practice.  Richard Horton’s “Offline: The case for global health” (Lancet, May 2023) pushes us to struggle against deeper issues in our field, including power and money imbalances, unearned privileges, racism, and the omniscience to decide the narrative and tell the global south what it needs. While global health professionals engage in internal battles, the true adversaries…