Beauty Dhlamini is a global health scholar with a focus on health inequalities. She works with community and grassroots organizations and cohosts the podcast Mind the Health Gap.
The World Health Organization recently declared monkeypox a public health emergency, even though it’s been prevalent in parts of Africa for decades. Often motivated by economic concerns, the body’s inconsistent decisions are endangering the lives of millions.
Water is a basic resource for all human beings. Yet market forces are increasingly privatizing water provision — not only making water unaffordable to poor and working-class people but posing a serious threat to public health in the midst of the pandemic.
The Global North is responding to vaccine inequality by dumping near-expired doses on African countries without infrastructure to disseminate them in time. Those doses end up in the trash — and it’s the fault of rich countries.