In 2015, almost exactly ten years ago, the great journalist and former CEO of the ONE Campaign, Michael Elliott, wrote the Time magazine cover article, “The Age of Miracles,” describing the bold new international aid initiatives and declining rates of child and AIDS deaths during the prior decade.
2024, in contrast, feels like an inflection point in global health. Remarkable successes have occurred, such as the response to Rwanda’s Marburg outbreak, but aid budgets are falling, climate and conflict are creating new challenges, and the societal and political divisions over the COVID response remain unhealed. The global consensus that characterized global health’s age of miracles feels long ago.
Whether or not global health will have a second act is a story that Think Global Health will be watching in 2025. In the meantime, our 24 best stories from 2024 offer insight as to what to expect in the coming year.
Turning to Russia, the Wilson Center’s Nataliya Shok outlines how the former superpower is using climate diplomacy to advance its geopolitical ends and the ongoing challenges—including the Ukraine war, Middle East tensions, and economic pressure from the West—that could marginalize that effort.
Ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic’s fifth anniversary, Aggrey Aluso, from Resilience Action Network Africa, weighs in on the utility of travel bans to contain viral spread, citing evidence from Rwanda’s recent Marburg outbreak.
Until next year!—Thomas J. Bollyky, Founding Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor
