Wherever you may be reading this: thank science. As you dress your children for school, commute, commune, worship or workout: thank science. As you plan a wedding, year-end celebrations, a trip, surgery, or dental cleaning: thank science. Our very survival is thanks to collaborative research and science that delivered safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines in record […]
The year 2020 was one for the record books: an estimated 90 million people were driven into extreme poverty; it tied for the hottest year on record, with soaring global temperatures and heat waves resulting in thousands of fatalities; and in any given month, 19% of our planet’s land area was stricken by severe drought, […]
Polio, yellow fever, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and other deadly or debilitating diseases are routinely prevented and controlled with vaccines—when and where they are accessible.[1] Characterized as one of the most effective public health interventions ever available, WHO estimates that immunization saves four to five million lives every year.[2] And yet. After another year working to […]
The results are in and deeply troubling: in the absence of rapid, comprehensive vaccination rollouts, SARS-CoV-2 runs amok, mutates into more contagious variants and, for the unvaccinated, kills at a breakneck pace. Witness the Delta variant that research suggests is more than twice as contagious as the original strain that ripped the world asunder in […]
COVID-19 is neither the first, last, nor the worst pandemic we will face as a species. Novel zoonoses will continue to develop and spread as the climate shifts, ecosystems contract and habitats overlap. It is entirely possible that history will categorize the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘starter plague.’ Our hyper-connected, yet increasingly fragmented world is […]
As members of the global public health community, we thought the outgoing Trump administration in Washington could not do much else to shock us. But when President Biden revealed that his predecessor had left him not with a bad plan to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic—but with no plan at all—we were appalled, contemplating the nearly […]
We are all fatigued, frazzled. Many of us have lost too many and too much, and still more will suffer long-term physical and mental effects. A strange geography has cropped into our lexicon: states, provinces and entire countries mapped by their rates of COVID-19, telling us how dangerous it is to go outside, go to […]
MEDICC Review announces three new sections of the peer-reviewed journal, as well as rolling publication of important papers as they are approved. These changes respond to the urgent need to bring the contributions of the region’s scientists and health professionals to a wider global audience, especially regarding the most pressing One Health issues of our […]
COVID-19 has upended the world’s healthcare infrastructures and its economies, casting a glaring light on the failings and flaws already in place, all suffered unequally. This has forced leaders and the public at large to face the stark contrast between human society as it exists and the society that is possible, with both the world’s […]
January 2020 begins a new decade, a chance for the international health community to take a hard look at where we are, where we stand, what we stand for and why we need to stand up. Staring us down are two concurrent global health emergencies: the coronavirus epidemic originating in Wuhan, China and climate change. […]
Addressing the world’s injustices in all forms is the only way to breathe life into the “health for all” principle and aspiration expressed so eloquently in the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration. The first of these injustices is more evident than it was 41 years ago: the international economic order has concentrated vast wealth in ever-fewer pockets, […]
How to assess global health at the close of 2018 and project achievable goals for the new year? WHO began on a somber and urgent note by identifying Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019. They are: air pollution and climate change; noncommunicable diseases; global influenza pandemic; fragile and vulnerable settings; antimicrobial resistance; Ebola and […]
An editorial in a recent double issue of Seminars in Oncology dedicated to Cuba commented that, in contrast to most current therapeutic research that provides relatively little new information, Cuban research represents “ . . . truly out of the box thinking, crafted in a country where resource limitations have clearly incentivized novel approaches.” Indeed, […]
The first truly universal society was the society of researchers. May the coming generation establish a political and economic society which will insure us against catastrophes. —Albert Einstein in Havana, December 19, 1930 Few may be aware of Einstein’s 30 hours in Cuba, just as the world was plummeting into the Great Depression. He was […]
Securing science in the public interest implies two imperatives: a belief in science, in evidence, in facts; and a belief in the public, in people’s right to a science that places their needs first. Cuba’s Day of Science, celebrated every January 15 since 1960, embodies both, representing a research philosophy embedded in a universal public […]
MEDICC Review’s 10th-anniversary year approaches its close in an atmosphere that is, to say the least, turbulent. This issue goes to press while Cuba, several other Caribbean nations, and parts of the USA are still reeling from an unprecedented series of hurricanes. Irma hit Cuba hard, but by October 1, the electrical grid was fully functional again. In grim contrast, Puerto Rico is said to be looking at a full year before electricity can be completely restored. Cuba offered to send Puerto Rico four brigades of engineers and electrical workers (along with a fully equipped field hospital and 41 disaster response specialists), but Washington has yet to acknowledge the offer. This lends ironic poignance to MEDICC Review’s April–July cover image of a young Cuban doctor ready to go to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina with Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Contingent. In 2005, that offer was refused; this one is simply ignored.
