Older and wiser?

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Older and wiser?

I realised as I prepared this posting that some of it is old news, given the speed with which things get passed round on Facebook. Never mind – here is the first report for 2015 and I want it on my webpage anyway. On 22 November, while I was in Canada, in Toronto to be exact, a letter arrived at 1 Brabazon Road in Norwich. Ailsa opened it and phoned me to share the contents. I am very glad she did. I took the call walking down Yonge Street, the station to get the train to Waterloo. This is not a salubrious part of town, but it is where the second hand bookshops are located.

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Cancelled planes and the run up to Christmas

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In the last couple of weeks I have had two short spells in Canada split by one in the UK. I have just been in London for a board meeting for AIDSpan, an NGO based in Nairobi. Its mission is to ‘reinforce the effectiveness of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by serving as an independent watchdog of the Fund and its grant implementers’. I really enjoy these meetings and have a sense the organization is doing something worthwhile. We are a small board, just six people, and work well together.

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Thanksgiving!

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There are many places in Ontario named after English towns. Not far from Waterloo, there is a Norwich and down the road, the small town of Stratford hosts, perhaps predictably, an excellent Shakespeare festival. The other day I told a colleague I needed to leave the meeting we were at: I was travelling to London.

“Oh”, she responded, “So am I”.

The difference was she had to drive for an hour while my journey was to Pearson Airport, Amsterdam, and a connection to Heathrow.

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Kudos to KLM

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I really like KLM and am a steadfast customer. Their loyalty cards were introduced about the time I began major travelling. As a result I rapidly reached the highest level (Platinum Elite, in case you were wondering). In the 1990s when you had held this for five years you were given lifetime status. I have been an ‘elite’ flyer since 1996. It does make a difference. The access to the lounges gives private space to work, relax, drink and shower; there is automatic seating in the premium economy cabin; priority on boarding and shorter queues.

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Ebola and Global Governance

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An interview on Ebola and Global Governance on CIGI online.

As of this week, there have been over 13,000 suspected cases of, and just under 5,000 deaths caused by, Ebola. In coordinating a response, the international community has worked through the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, a partnership including the World Health Organization, World Bank Group, Médecins Sans Frontières, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To learn more about how these global governance institutions have responded to this situation, we speak to CIGI Chair of Global Health Alan Whiteside.

Read the full interview…

What can donors learn from HIV in responding to ebola

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Since the first case of Ebola appeared last year, the virus has infected nearly 10,000 people. The epidemic is concentrated in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea — post-conflict countries with incredibly weak health systems. It stands to have severe health, social, and economic consequences and is arguably the most pressing challenge to global health security the world has faced in decades.

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Spring in Durban and Cape Town and Autumn in Norwich

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Spring in Durban and Cape Town and Autumn in Norwich

This is the second posting to go up in a short time. The management of my website has moved to John Price. I want to say a big thank you to Shela McCullough and Linda Mtambo of HEARD for all that they did to keep my posts flowing! By early next year we will have looked at the design of the site and changed it. I hope to make it somewhat interactive.

I was in the UK and South Africa in late September and early October. The first part of the trip was covered in my last posting. This one is about Durban, Cape Town and Norwich. After 24 hours in Durban (a silly side trip because I was not paying attention to my travel plans), I flew to Cape Town for a Health Systems Symposium. These meetings are held every two years, this was the third, the first I had been to. As all my South African family lives in Cape Town and the environs I was able to see them. My visits to the South Africa will become less frequent in the years ahead, so this is important to me.

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