Viet Thanh Nguyen reminds us (The Nation, 22 July) how often our sympathy – and care – for victims of war often comes with baggage of hypocrisy and racism. The deserved sympathy for those civilians suffering from the Russian invasion is rarely matched by our sympathy for civilians who have suffered by by Americans over the past decades. Nguyen talks of U.S. drone strikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia in the recent past, and the legacy of the U.S. military…
Fair taxation is fundamental to global health. Taxes provide the necessary resources to finance strategies to improve health, including social determinants of health (education, nutrition, housing, water, sanitation) and health care. Taxes provide resources for the public health infrastructure that is essential to implement and scale up the technologies and programs developed by the Gates Foundation. Taxes are also a mechanism to reduce the unconscionable income and wealth inequality that enormously impacts global health. As important as it is, fair…