Medicalising Poverty Is Not the Answer
Government plans to have doctors prescribe things like heating and fresh food to patients only treat the symptoms of a bigger social ill: poverty.
14 Articles by:
Beauty Dhlamini
Beauty Dhlamini is a Tribune columnist. She is a global health scholar with a focus on health inequalities and co-hosts the podcast Mind the Health Gap.
The Climate Change Health Crisis
More than half of known human infectious diseases can be aggravated by climate change. Apathetic political leaders aren’t just condemning us to extreme weather’s devastation – they’re condemning us to perpetual health crisis, too.
Monkeypox Shows Global Health Solidarity Is Still a Myth
After the failures of the Covid pandemic, the world’s richest countries pledged greater cooperation on global health policies – but the monkeypox outbreak is already exposing those commitments as little more than words.
Capitalism Created the Baby Formula Shortage
The US baby formula shortage has left millions of parents struggling to feed their children. It’s the result of a capitalist system that prioritises the profits of super rich corporations at the expense of public health.
Why Overturning Roe Threatens Abortion Rights Everywhere
America’s anti-abortion movement exerts huge global influence, restricting the use of foreign aid, funding sympathetic campaigns and setting cultural norms. The Supreme Court victory is going to turbo-charge it.
Trade Unions Are the Frontline of Public Health
Victories for unionised cleaners and porters in hospitals across the country prove that trade unions aren’t just essential for workers’ terms and conditions – they are leading the fight for public health.
The Cost of Living Crisis Is Making You Sick
The cost of living crisis hitting Britain today isn’t just an economic problem – by forcing millions of people to go without heat and food, it will also have a devastating impact on public health.
The Next Pandemic
We can take action today to stop the next pandemic, from preventing environmental destruction to properly funding health systems across the world – but there is little sign that governments are willing to do it.
How Abandoning Africa Prolonged the Pandemic
Two years into the pandemic, the world’s wealthiest nations are almost fully vaccinated – but the governments and corporations that control healthcare resources have abandoned almost one billion Africans.
The Global North’s Vaccine Charity Is a Sham
The Global North is responding to vaccine inequality by dumping near-expired doses on African countries without infrastructure to disseminate them. Those doses don’t end up in arms – they end up in the bin.
How a Global Vaccine Apartheid Is Hindering the Fight Against Covid
The Global North’s stockpile of Covid-19 vaccines won’t eradicate the virus – but it does expose the reality of capitalism’s deep international inequalities.
How the NHS Uses Precarity as a Weapon Against Worker Organising
Despite staff shortages, workers on different contracts in the NHS are being pitted against each other for shifts – a tactic designed to prevent them from organising effectively to improve conditions.
Vaccine Billionaires Show Why Medicine Can’t Be Left to the Market
Since the start of the pandemic, nine new billionaires have been minted from vaccines funded in large part by public money – meanwhile, citizens of poorer countries are still waiting for their first dose.
Bill Gates’ Monopoly Medicine
The Gates Foundation claims to have fought for access to medicine during the pandemic, but its defence of intellectual property rights has had the opposite impact – and exposed the limits of philanthrocapitalism.