Bill Gates

Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.” Gates argues that the principal metric for climate action should not be global temperature or near-term emission reductions alone, but measured improvement in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations. He argues that the focus of climate action should be on the “greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people.” The suffering of poor communities must take priority, since, in his view, “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.” Climate change is about the health of the most vulnerable This position resonates with a core message that has emerged …

20251029.CLIMATE Lancet Countdown 2025.005.1600

How the Lancet Countdown illuminates a new path to climate-resilient health systems

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The 2025 Lancet Countdown report has begun to acknowledge a critical, often-overlooked source of intelligence to build climate-resilient health systems: the health worker. By including testimonials from health workers alongside formal quantitative evidence, the Lancet cracks open a door, hinting at a world beyond globally standardized datasets. This is a necessary first step. However, the report’s framework for action remains a traditional, top-down model. It primarily frames the health workforce as passive recipients of knowledge—a group that must be “educated and trained” because they are “unprepared”, rather than build on existing evidence that points to health workers as leaders for climate-health resilience. The 2025 report confirms that climate change’s assault on human health has reached alarming new levels. Yet, within this sobering assessment lies a quiet but potentially pivotal shift. For the first time, the Countdown’s country profiles integrate direct testimonials from frontline health workers, explicitly acknowledging their “lived experiences as valuable …

20251029.CLIMATE Lancet Countdown 2025.008.1600

Climate change and health: what the Lancet Countdown says about the value and significance of local knowledge and action

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Here is everything that the new Lancet Countdown says about the value and significance of indigenous and other forms of local knowledge, as well as their value for community-led action to respond to the impacts of climate change on health. Why does this matter? Read our article: How the Lancet Countdown illuminates a new path to climate-resilient health systems On the value of community-led action and the significance of local knowledge Defining community-led action by its local context and empowerment “Community-led actions are those spearheaded by self-organised individuals within a community, working together for a common goal. Rooted in local societal, cultural, and economic contexts, they can promote equity, empower local actors, and strengthen climate resilience.” Community-led action as a driver of meaningful progress “Individual, community-led, and civil society actions can drive meaningful progress with substantial health benefits.” Grassroots activities growing into formal organizations “These grassroots activities can grow into …

Old poison in new bottles

How do we stop AI-generated ‘poverty porn’ fake images?

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, Global health

There is an important and necessary conversation happening right now about the use of generative artificial intelligence in global health and humanitarian communications. Researchers like Arsenii Alenichev are correctly identifying a new wave of “poverty porn 2.0,” where artificial intelligence is used to generate stereotypical, racialized images of suffering – the very tropes many of us have worked for decades to banish. The alarms are valid. The images are harmful. But I am deeply concerned that in our rush to condemn the new technology, we are misdiagnosing the cause. The problem is not the tool. The problem is the user. Generative artificial intelligence is not the cause of poverty porn. The root cause is the deep-seeded racism and colonial mindset that have defined the humanitarian aid and global health sectors since their inception. This is not a new phenomenon. It is a long-standing pattern. In my private conversations with colleagues …

State of AI report

What the 2025 State of AI Report means for global health and humanitarian action

Reda SadkiArtificial intelligence, Global health

The 2025 State of AI Report has arrived, painting a picture of an industry being fundamentally reshaped by “The Squeeze.” This is a critical, intensifying constraint on three key resources: the massive-scale compute (processing power) required for training, the availability of high-quality data, and the specialized human talent to build frontier models. This squeeze, the report details, is accelerating a consolidation of power. It favors the “hyperscalers”—the handful of large technology corporations that can afford to build their own power plants to run their data centers. For leaders in global health and humanitarian action, the report is essential reading. However, it must be read with a critical eye. The report’s narrative is, in many ways, the narrative of the hyperscalers. It focuses on the benchmarks they dominate, the closed models they are building, and the resource problems they face. This “view from the top” is valuable, but it is not …

Pour retrouver les enfants congolais non vaccinés, il est question des fumoirs à poisson et du dialogue inter-religieux

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Au deuxième jour de leurs travaux en direct, les professionnels de la santé congolais sont passés de la découverte à l’exploration des causes profondes qui laissent des centaines de milliers d’enfants exposés aux maladies évitables par la vaccination. Ils découvrent que les racines du problème sont souvent là où personne ne les attend: dans l’économie de la pêche, le dialogue avec les églises ou la gestion des camps de déplacés. Lire également: En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé Les analyses, plus fines, révèlent des leviers d’action insoupçonnés, démontrant la puissance d’une méthode qui transforme les soignants en stratèges. « La séance d’hier, c’était une séance de découverte, mais aujourd’hui, c’était une séance d’exploration. Explorer, c’est aller en profondeur. Il faut sonder ». Ces mots de Fidèle Tshibanda Mulangu, un participant congolais, résument la bascule …

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

En République démocratique du Congo, la traque des enfants « zéro dose » passe par l’intelligence collective des acteurs de la santé

Reda SadkiGlobal health

KINSHASA et LUMUMBASHI, le 7 octobre 2025 (La Fondation Apprendre Genève) – « Ces jeunes filles qui ont des grossesses indésirables, quand elles mettent au monde, elles ont tendance à laisser les enfants livrés à eux-mêmes », explique Marguerite Bosita, coordonnatrice d’une organisation non gouvernementale à Kinshasa. « Ce manque d’informations sur les questions liées à la vaccination se pose encore plus, car ces enfants grandissent exposés à des difficultés de santé ». Sa voix, émanant d’une mission de terrain dans la province du Kongo Central, s’est jointe à des centaines d’autres ce 7 octobre 2025. Il s’agissait de la deuxième journée d’un exercice d’apprentissage par les pairs de 16 jours visant à identifier et à atteindre les enfants dits « zéro dose » en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Ce sont ces centaines de milliers de nourrissons qui n’ont reçu aucun vaccin pour les protéger de nombreuses maladies. Pour …

Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health from Algiers to Acre

Colonization, climate change, and indigenous health: from Algiers to Acre

Reda SadkiGlobal health

I sat in a conference hall in Rio Branco, Acre State, Brazil. My mind was in a sanatorium of Algiers, Algeria. This was where my mother was sent as a girl. They told her she got tuberculosis because she was an “indigène musulman”. In 1938, the year of my mother’s birth and after over a century of colonization, about 5 out of every 100 Algerian people got infected with tuberculosis each year. French colonial reports show that Algerians died from tuberculosis at much higher rates than French settlers. They claimed the disease was endemic due to the supposed inferiority of our people. And that she was going to die. Colonialism is a liar. She survived. And it took less than eight years for an independent Algeria, free of the scourge of colonialism, to eradicate the scourge of TB. Listening to the leaders at Brazil’s First National Seminar on Indigenous Health …

Gender in emergencies

Gender in emergencies: a new peer learning programme from The Geneva Learning Foundation

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

This is a critical moment for work on gender in emergencies. Across the humanitarian sector, we are witnessing a coordinated backlash. Decades of progress are threatened by targeted funding cuts, the erasure of essential research and tools, and a political climate that seeks to silence our work. Many dedicated practitioners feel isolated and that their work is being devalued. This is not a time for silence. It is a time for solidarity and for finding resilient ways to sustain our practice. In this spirit, The Geneva Learning Foundation is pleased to announce the new Certificate peer learning programme for gender in emergencies. We offer this programme to build upon the decades of vital work by countless practitioners and activists, seeing our role as one of contribution to the collective effort of all who continue to champion gender equality in emergencies. Learn more and request your invitation to the programme and its first …

The crisis in scientific publishing from AI fraud to epistemic justice

The crisis in scientific publishing: from AI fraud to epistemic justice

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

There is a crisis in scientific publishing. Science is haunted. In early 2024, one major publisher retracted hundreds of scientific papers. Most were not the work of hurried researchers, but of ghosts—digital phantoms generated by artificial intelligence. Featuring nonsensical diagrams and fabricated data, they had sailed through the gates of peer review. This spectre of AI-driven fraud is not only a new technological threat. It is also a symptom of a pre-existing disease. For years, organized networks have profited from inserting fake papers into the scholarly record. It seems that scientific publishing’s peer review process, intended to seek truth, cannot even tell the real from the fake. These failures are not just academic embarrassments. In fields like global health, where knowledge means the difference between life and death, we can no longer afford to ignore them. Indeed, the crisis in scientific journals is not, at its heart, a crisis in …