The performances of African countries particularly in West African Sub- region on global-human development indices had been abysmal over the years and have worsened in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. This is a source of concern to scholars. Expenditure on health and education are recognized by...

The world has enjoyed huge improvements in population health during the last half century. But major health problems persist, particularly in tropical countries, which are still struggling with infectious diseases while increasingly having to deal with noncommunicable diseases. Several classic...

Patents should no longer be granted for DNA, but only for new medicinal products, new vaccines and genetic tests which are developed on the basis of DNA. Only in this way, patent law can gain general acceptance in civil and academic society, without losing sight of the interests of the biotech...

In the midst of a pandemic, the most pressing issues are those of containment and mitigation—both in terms of the virus itself and the economic costs. However, it is also in the midst of a pandemic that one can learn important lessons about preparedness for possible future pandemics.The...

Three months into the COVID-19 outbreak caused by a novel strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the world is still in search of an effective therapeutic drug. Experimental drugs developed for other infections, such as Gilead's remdesivir, have been repurposed with unclear success. A recent small...

The favored federal policy to address climate change is a domestic cap-and-trade system. However, a vocal minority of political leaders have begun arguing in favor of a carbon tax. Carbon taxes seem particularly attractive both for fiscal reasons and because they provide certainty over the price...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need to address issues concerning health sector policy, particularly when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to any strategy of...

Scholarship on international health law is currently pushing the boundaries while taking stock of achievements made over the past few decades. However despite the forward thinking approach of scholars working in the field of global health one area remains a stumbling block in the path to...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is bringing about once-in-a-century changes to human society. Three key properties escalate the COVID-19 pandemic into a syndemic. To address this triple crisis, we discuss the importance of integrating early, targeted and coordinated public...

Pandemics are a recurring feature of human history. The COVID-19 virus has several features that mean it poses a particularly severe challenge. It threatens to cause a collapse of hospital systems through a high number of serious cases arising in a short period of time, and this, rather than...