Forging a New Discipline
“Global Health is an attitude. It is about the universal nature of our human predicament. It is a statement about our commitment to health as a fundamental quality of liberty and equity.” – Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet Whenever I mention my work overseas, I get met with skepticism nearly as often as curiosity. […]
Are We Making Any Difference?
On Dec 1st 2013, Mbarara town was coloured white and red; school uniforms, banners, red ribbons and T- shirts are all telling us how we are getting to Zero HIV new infections. They were the World AIDS Day National celebrations! These celebrations were held at the Bible Institute grounds in Nyamityobora ward, an area that […]
Global Health and Open Source
In the world of software, your best bet is open source software – usually – because, it comes free, has been developed by a community, and everyone working on it, depends on everyone else to review what they are doing to make it better. So you have heard of Open Source Operating Systems (Ubuntu, SuSE, […]
Beyond a Good Health Care System Lies the Need For a Well Educated Society
A health care system is the organization of people, institutions, and resources to deliver health care services to meet the health needs of target populations. However, as simple as the definition sounds, Health care systems are very complex and multi-faceted in nature. World Health Organization defines health care system as consisting of all organizations, people and actions whose primary intent is […]
At the Point of Care
In the second half of my fellowship, I have a completely new project on my hands: supporting the use of a point-of-care CD4 diagnostic, the Alere Pima CD4 Analyzer. There are currently about 120 Pimas in-country and most of these are set up with USB modems and mobile network SIM cards that enable them to […]
When calmness opens your ways
With the demanding work that is required to overcome the perpetual challenges related to global health complexities, people find themselves in situations where they need different skills, beyond their area of expertise, to cope with multiple responsibilities. But what happens when despite the multiple skills that an individual possesses, the work does not go well? […]
Uganda: Where did we go wrong?
Uganda is a gifted country with a lot of natural resources, favorable weather conditions and an admired tourist centre. One would expect all of these opportunities to yield increased incomes among households, which would be essential in meeting household basic needs and improving on people’s wellbeing. In fact, the Uganda economy profile for 2013 shows […]
How Cohabitating with a Spider is Akin to Moving to a Foreign country to do Global Health Work
One day not too long ago I walked into my bathroom here in Malawi and saw a spider scurry along one of the white-tiled walls. I am by no means well-versed in arachnids and can’t tell an innocuous garden spider from a potentially deadly black widow. This one’s body was fat, spotted, and tan and […]
Young People Living with HIV/AIDS and Sexuality: What’s the deal?
Few things are more rejuvenating than working with young people and I am privileged to be doing just that. I work for Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation in Uganda as an Advocacy and Communications Specialist. I have been at Baylor-Uganda for over six months and while much remains the same in terms of how […]
Measuring Progress: Dashboard Designing
Monitoring and evaluation is a critical component of project success. It’s one of the powerful project and program measurement tools used to gauge progress and improvement over time, though it’s rarely used a dashboard. Before joining GHC and Afya Mzuri, I had not the slightest idea of what a scorecard or dashboard was in the […]