Report: Women in Africa face profound gender inequalities and those inequalities do great economic harm to individuals and nations Alanna Shaikh, MPH September 2, 2016The UN Development Program's flagship report on development in Africa--the Africa Human Development 2016 report -- was released this week. It focuses on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The report desc...
Collecting honest data on maternal deaths gives us the information we need to save women’s lives. Alanna Shaikh, MPH August 22, 2016Maternal death is one of the thorny problems of global health. Many different factors can cause a mother to lose her life – cultural attitudes about childbirth, geographical isolation, access to healthcare and ...
Here’s what a new UN report says about trends in global drug use Alanna Shaikh, MPH June 27, 2016The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime just released its annual drug report. In summary, things are okay. We could be doing better on protecting people from the harmful effects of illegal and illicit drug...
The current human diet is already harming people and the planet, and if we don’t change the way we eat there won’t be enough food for everyone by 2050. Alanna Shaikh, MPH June 14, 2016We are facing a food crisis.The human population is outstripping the capacity of the world to feed it; this is compounded by eroding topsoil and the potential for climate change to reduce crop yields. At th...
What can the fight against Malaria teach us about Zika? Alanna Shaikh, MPH June 10, 2016Zika is spread by so mosquitoes, so to stop Zika, you have to stop the mosquitoes. And mosquitoes are everywhere.Fortunately, the global health community has been fighting mosquitos for years. A look at the...
The Two Main Reasons HIV is Still Around After All These Years Alanna Shaikh, MPH June 6, 2016How is HIV not over yet? We have drugs that treat it and prevent transmission to others. We have a whole suite of prevention methods that work, ranging from condoms to clean needles. But despite it all, HIV jus...
The World Health Organization just started counting attacks against health workers. There is a trend. Alanna Shaikh, MPH May 27, 2016Over the last ten years, caring about other people has become dangerous business. The risk of death for aid workers has never been higher.A grim new World Health Organization report summarizing the data on ...
Female genital mutilation harms women. So why are there so few medical options for reducing that harm? Alanna Shaikh, MPH May 19, 2016The World Health Organization has released new guidelines on care for women who have been subjected to genital mutilation (FGM). This is an effort to bring medical standardization to an extremely complicated – ...
Extreme inequality is expensive and destructive. But there is something we can do about it on a global scale Alanna Shaikh, MPH May 6, 2016Inequality is the issue of our time. The gap between rich and poor has ceased closing; instead it’s getting worse. That gap exacerbates every other problem we face, from climate change (poor people are hit hard...
