"I didn't understand why I had access to food and other children my age didn't, and that didn't make sense in my head at the time. Injustice was something that always shaped my path and I wanted to do something about that."
I am open-minded; I believe in integrative practices, and I agree that the medical establishment can be arrogant and unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, which now funds so much of medical research. But I fully understand Scherer's frustration with his interminable discussions with Kennedy about scientific articles.
The Missing Social Unit From middle school onward, American children don't belong to a "class" in any stable sense. They move continuously - subject to subject, room to room, teacher to teacher. There's extensive discourse around respect, equity, and inclusion. But there's remarkably little structured attention to the actual social life of any group. Because there isn't really a group.
Aid cuts could lead to more than 22 million avoidable deaths by 2030, including 5.4 million children under five, according to the most comprehensive modelling to date. In the past two decades there have been dramatic falls in the number of young children dying from infectious diseases, driven by aid directed to the developing world, researchers wrote in the Lancet Global Health. But that progress was at risk of reversal because of abrupt budget cuts by donor countries, including the US and the UK.
There is little doubt that this is what African countries need if they are serious about universal health coverage - ensuring that every member of their populations has access to this fundamental human right. But such an approach has never been implemented in Africa. Some of the reasons for this are outlined in a report on health financing by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the continent's public-health agency based in Addis Ababa, published last week (see go.nature.com/3o9wxfc).
