Epidemics/pandemics echo similar global crises throughout human history

Coincident polio and Ebola crises expose similar fault lines in the current global health regime

BACKGROUND In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared two "public health emergencies of international concern", in response to the worldwide polio situation and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa respectively. Both emergencies can be seen as testing moments, challenging the current model of epidemic governance, where two worldviews co-exist: global health security and humanitarian bio...

From famine to food crisis: what history can teach us about local and global subsistence crises.

The number of famine prone regions in the world has been shrinking for centuries. It is currently mainly limited to sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the impact of endemic hunger has not declined and the early twenty-first century seems to be faced with a new threat: global subsistence crises. In this essay I question the concepts of famine and food crisis from different analytical angles: historical and...

IMMUNOSUPPRESSION IN HUMAN UTERINE TISSUES THROUGHOUT THE REPRODUCTIVE CYCLE

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare whether the explant supernatants prepared from endometrial tissues during the proliferative phase, secretory phase and early pregnancy differ in immunosuppressive activity. Specimens of nonpregnant endometrium from hysterectomies and normal first trimester decidua following elective aspiration termination of pregnancy were obtained. ...

Portfolio Manager Behavior and Global Financial Crises

I develop a two market agent-based model to study how global portfolio managers affect global financial crises and stability. The Markowitz model is extended by incorporating several insights from behavioral finance. Simulation results of an agent-based version of the Markowitz model reveal that global financial crises do not occur when global managers are added to the model. However, when risk...

Global health response to crises needs reform.