Colonialism, Civil War, and Ebola: Historical Perspectives On Contemporary Healthcare in Sierra Leone
BY ELIJAH RAMI During the mid-twentieth century, the British Empire rapidly succumbed to a striking decline. After the Second World War, its colonies in Africa and the Caribbean in particular witnessed a wave of nationalist movements that began to call for self-determination and independence from bureaucratic colonial administrations. Sierra Leone gained independence from the United…
Strange Ways: What Virus Evolution Can Tell Us About the Next Epidemic
BY COLIN HEMEZ A New Virus Emerges In mid-November of 2002, a few farmers in the Guangdong province of China began falling ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. This was not necessarily out of the ordinary for the region, but the disease spread rapidly, infecting some 806 people and killing 34 by mid-February of 20031. A doctor…
Inside the Doctor-Patient Relationship of China
BY SOPHIA YIN For Chinese doctors, patient satisfaction can be—quite literally—a matter of life or death. Official data from China’s Ministry of Health reported “9,831 ‘grave incidents’ of medical disputes in 2006, with 5,519 medical staff injured and 200 million yuan (over 29 million dollars) in property damage.1 Such violent incidents are widespread across the…
Is Fracking Safe?
BY EMMA PHELPS Hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, is a drilling technique that allows the extraction of previously inaccessible natural gas from shale formations. The United States has experienced a fracking boom in the last decade. In February of 2016, the United States was producing 92 billion cubic feet of natural gas per…
Healthcare: Is there only one correct answer?
BY ELIZABETH LI The United States (US) healthcare system and the European healthcare system are ideologically and functionally different. When it comes to rankings, the US consistently ranks below other countries, such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in terms of life expectancy and health-care spending per capita. This disparity in the rankings begs…
Delhi’s Air Pollution and Its Effects on Children’s Health
BY REBECCA SLUTSKY Which of our world’s cities has the worst air pollution? According to the World Health Organization, it’s Delhi, the capital of India.1 Although air pollution affects the entire population of this metropolis, Delhi’s children are the most defenseless against its toxic effects. Recent studies have confirmed serious deterioration of air quality in…
Transforming the Narrative of Bangladesh’s ‘Mini-Deserts’
BY MINH VU Situated on the Ganges Delta and the Bay of Bengal, the nation of Bangladesh is constantly devastated by flooding from the 230 rivers surrounding it. Pockets of farming villages often have their growing crops and farmland destroyed by the torrential water, forcing families to leave in search of new villages and livelihoods.…
Q&A: Dr. Seth Wanye on Eye Care in Developing Countries
BY KAI DEBUS Seth Wanye (MD, PhD) is an ophthalmologist in Ghana, a lower-middle income country in West Africa. His focus is to make healthcare, specifically ophthalmic care, more accessible to people in remote areas. In 2005, he partnered with Unite for Sight, a non-profit based in New Haven, Connecticut, to expand his ability to…
PTSD in Children and Adolescents: Equivalent Exposures, Distinct Diagnoses
BY HOLLY ROBINSON One in four children living in the United States experiences a traumatic event before reaching adulthood.1 These distressing encounters, which include experiences from sexual abuse to natural disasters, affect the mental health of the individual as well as the overall wellbeing of the population. Because they are still in their formative years,…
Bringing Sustainable Healthcare to Under-Resourced Populations: Field Experiences from OneWorld Health
BY ONEWORLD HEALTH Global health is a rapidly growing field, and the need to improve access to high-quality care in developing countries has become increasingly apparent. Various charitable organizations, missionaries, and NGOs have attempted to supplement the health care provided by the government with short-term relief efforts. However, there is still a desperate need for…
Female Genital Mutilation: A Global Health Perspective
BY JESSICA SCHMERLER Imagine a procedure in which a child is cut in a highly personal area in a highly painful manner, with no say in the matter whatsoever. Associated with this procedure are complications ranging from infection and bleeding all the way to death. From many perspectives, this procedure is a violation of the…
A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Fight Cancer
BY GRACIE JIN In September, a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine discovered that the addition of glucose, a simple sugar, could transform a plant extract into a drug with potentially anti-cancer effects. To put it another way, Mary Poppin’s age-old lyric “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”…
The Global Health Implications of a Nuclear War
BY SARAH SPAULDING In recent years, the topic of nuclear weapons has been a hotbed of political controversy across the globe. Many argue that the widespread use of nuclear weapons is a more plausible reality today than ever before, but the threat of nuclear war has existed ever since the culmination of the US Manhattan…
Gaining Ground: Implementation Research and Viral Load Monitoring in Kampala, Uganda
BY ISLA HUTCHINSON MADDOX HIV/AIDS and Viral Load Monitoring in Uganda At the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa in July 2016, a prevailing sense of optimism filled the room as thousands of the brightest minds in HIV/AIDS research and care flooded the Durban International Convention Centre. This annual conference provides a unique…
Yale Global Health Review 