We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat.

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives

Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent.

The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

The model of the teaching hospital, which links research to teaching and service is what's missing in global health.

The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.