Global Health

On December 8, 2020 the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the United Kingdom. However, before vaccine manufacturing had been completed, global powers had bought up a disproportionate number of doses, leaving low and middle-income countries scrambling to figure out how to purchase doses for their residents. “We have to work, as Dr. King referred to in 1963, ‘in the fierce urgency of now,’” said John Nkengasong, MSc, PhD, and Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. “If we don’t really use that fierce urgency of now, then we are in trouble. This virus will become endemic [...]

March 3rd, 2021 An open letter to President Biden, and leaders of the US pharmaceutical industry, On February 24th, 2021, Ghana received the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccine secured by COVAX, the World Health Organization’s facility for global vaccine distribution. While this was an important milestone for the countries relying on COVAX to procure COVID-19 vaccinations, this shipment comes more than two months after the U.S. and other high-income countries began vaccinating their populations. Notably, it represents a tiny fraction of the doses needed to vaccinate even front-line healthcare workers on the African continent, never mind other groups globally that [...]

In the spring during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts, Harvard Medical student Ahmed Elnaiem saw firsthand how equity issues affected residents in Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in the state. Ahmed’s interest in social justice stems from his own childhood. His passion for exploring medicine’s role in addressing inequities led him to his mentor, Louise Ivers, MD, executive director of the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Policymakers often turn to Dr. Ivers, a public health expert, during crisis situations. When Holyoke public officials asked Dr. Ivers for support in fighting COVID-19, she called upon Ahmed who [...]

AT THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT in global health, Vanessa Kerry, MD, MSc, is among the Mass General leaders working tirelessly to address the deep-rooted health disparities that have put the world’s most vulnerable populations at higher risk of COVID-19 infection and death. In the U.S., the death rate in areas with majority populations of color is six times higher than in majority non-Hispanic white areas, according to analysis by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. People living in impoverished, crowded and racially and economically polarized regions are at the greatest risk. Internationally, across low-income countries, disparities are exacerbated by [...]

THE MASS GENERAL Center for Global Health (CGH) played a key role in the dissemination of MGH’s COVID ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) antibody test to support the urgent need for accurate testing and disease surveillance in Haiti and Bangladesh.Once Mass General had its ELISA test developed in March, Jason Harris, MD, MPH, Chief of Pediatric Global Health at Mass General Hospital for children, CGH Executive Director Louise Ivers, MD, MPH, DTM&H, and Richelle Charles, MD, FIDSA, Principal Investigator in the MGH Division of Infectious Diseases and CGH Associate in Global Health, in concert with other MGH staff, quickly joined forces with [...]

ON APRIL 1, Mass General Center for Global Health (CGH) partner Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH) broke ground on a new temporary COVID-19 Treatment Center that will more than triple the hospital’s capacity to properly manage, isolate and treat patients with COVID-19 as well as other highly infectious diseases. MRRH is a 600-bed hospital with a current full isolation capacity of only 16 beds housed in a temporary shed. The current Isolation Unit received its first COVID-19 patient on May 17. As of September 10, MRRH health workers have treated 66 confirmed COVID-19 cases—managing and discharging 59 of those patients [...]