Before patients can receive the right treatment, they need the right diagnosis. Despite their vital importance, access to diagnostic tools has never attracted as much attention as access to medicines. As with medicines, the 21st Century has seen major advances in diagnostic technologies. Unfortunately, affordability and accessibility haven’t kept pace, meaning even diagnostics well-suited for […]
Dear Parliamentarians, As you return from across the country to the House of Commons in Ottawa for the next sitting of Canada’s Parliament, we find ourselves at a moment of significant global unrest. Hundreds of millions of people’s lives, safety and dignity are at risk due to conflicts, disasters, and their deliberate exclusion from accessing […]
This article was originally publishing on Globe and Mail. “It would be an honour if a bomb killed all of us together, so we don’t have to suffer anymore. Dying together is better than this suffering.” These were the heartbreaking words a Rohingya man shared with my Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleagues in […]
Read More… from Rohingya: “Dying together is better than this suffering”
This article was originally published in Policy Options by Adam R Houston, Matthew Herder, and Srinivas Murthy. As governments move on from the COVID-19 pandemic, the policy conversation has shifted to the next threat. Whether that’s H5N1 – a strain of influenza virus currently spreading among cattle and in some instances to humans – or […]
Read More… from Canada’s pandemic preparedness investments still make equity an afterthought
The Government of Canada recently issued a formal response to a petition supported by international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calling on Canada to increase its humanitarian assistance for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where millions of people are in desperate need as a result of a violent armed conflict and the […]
Amid a daunting number of high-profile international emergencies consuming global attention in recent months, a massive humanitarian crisis has been causing widespread suffering in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past two years, seemingly out of sight for much of the world. Since March 2022, an estimated 1.6 million people who live near […]
Adam R Houston, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa and Jason Nickerson, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa As a medical organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is no stranger to measles, which has long been a serious and ongoing concern in many places where MSF operates. However, new challenges, such as the disruption of health systems caused […]
More than three years since a military coup in Myanmar led to a surge in conflict across the country, the United Nations estimates that almost two million people have been internally displaced by the ongoing violence, while thousands more have fled to neighbouring countries. In Rakhine State – an area in the west of Myanmar […]
A version of this article appears in Policy Options magazine. The negotiation text of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed Pandemic Treaty, released Oct 30th, contains language around not only equitable access to pandemic products like medicines and vaccines, but sustainable production of these products. Thankfully, Canadian proposals that would have undermined equitable access were […]
Read More… from Pandemic Preparedness Cannot Forget Existing Tools or Existing Diseases
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2023 Global Tuberculosis (TB) Report released today shows that the estimated global incidence of TB in 2022 remains unacceptably high, including for the more difficult to treat form of this disease, drug-resistant TB (DR-TB). With an estimated 1.3 million people having died from TB in 2022, and still only about […]