Category: World health

Celebrating the first ever Universal Health Coverage Day: 12.12.14

Today, the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) will join 500+ organisations around the world to launch the first-ever Universal Health Coverage Day. This historic coalition will mark the anniversary of a landmark UN resolution urging all countries to provide universal access to healthcare without financial hardship.

We believe that no one should fall into poverty because they get sick and need healthcare. Universal health coverage (UHC) is essential for making progress against challenges like HIV, cancer, Ebola, dementia, diabetes and mental health issues – and for creating a fairer, more resilient society.

Universal healthcare coverage is one of the seven forums at 2015’s World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), which takes place in Doha from 17-18th February and launched by the Qatar Foundation.

Raising awareness about female genital mutilation: What can we do to help?

By Sunila Prasad, Imperial Hub

On 16th October, Imperial Hub hosted its inaugural talk of The Challenge Series – a series of seminars aiming to inform students on key issues.

Imperial Hub was honoured to host special guest speaker and FGM survivor, Ms Hoda Ali, and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial, Dr Naomi Low-Beer, to offer their insights into the increasingly prevalent issue of female genital mutilation (FGM).

With Hoda as the first speaker, the audience was immediately immersed into the world of FGM through the perspective of a survivor. Having experienced FGM at the age of 7 in her native Somalia and then forced to flee her war-torn country, she finally settled in the UK to work as a sexual health nurse and FGM campaigner.

Moving from global heath 3.0 to global health 4.0

Richard Smith of the UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative and Adjunct Professor at IGHI talks about our NCD event at the Royal Society on 4th October and how we can make progress in global health as a whole.

Global health 1.0 was called tropical medicine and was primarily concerned with keeping white men alive in the tropics. Global health 2.0 was called international health and comprised clever people in rich countries doing something to help people in poor countries. It had Cold War overtones. Global health 3.0, which is still the main manifestation of global health, is about researchers from rich countries leading research programmes in poor countries.

Richard Smith: “I’m the minister of health in a poor country”

Richard Smith of UnitedHealth and Adjunct Professor at IGHI, writes for the BMJ about our upcoming NCD event at the Royal Society on 4th October.  

I’m the minister of health in a poor country. Until last year I was a urologist. I was the president’s urologist and took out his prostate. To be honest, I don’t think it needed to come out, but he insisted. You don’t resist the president. He was delighted with the result and rewarded me by making me minister of health.

It doesn’t feel like a reward. Everybody wants something from me, but I’m very low in the hierarchy.