Harvard International Review | Harvard's Premier Journal of International Affairs

By Changyong Rhee

As the Sherpa of the Republic of Korea, I found one of the most rewarding outcomes of the Seoul Summit was that it delivered on all of the commitments made at previous Summits. For instance,...

Northern Juggernaut? A Look Inside the Canadian Economy with Don Drummond

By Winston Gee

Don Drummond is the Matthews Fellow on Global Public Policy at Queen’s University at Kingston. From 2000 to 2010, he was the Senior Vice President and Chief...

Trade and Climate Change

By Joshua Meltzer, Katherine Sierra

Trade and Climate Change
A Mutually Supportive Policy

Joshua Meltzer serves as a fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution where he focuses on...

Trouble in Palestine

By Alex Palmer

The revolutions that have swept across the Middle East and North Africa to create the “Arab Spring” of 2011 have left virtually no corner of the region untouched. From Qatar...

Saving Spain's Economy

By Jonatan Lemus

After the Portuguese government requested a bailout from the European Union, many argued that Spain would be next in line. Although recent reforms led by Prime Minister Jose...

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Features, Print Features

Cholera Vaccination in Haiti

By Alan R. Hinman, Fernet Léandre, Jean-William Pape, Jonathan L. Weigel, Louise C. Ivers, Mark L. Rosenberg, Paul Farmer | December 25, 2011 | 2

The cholera epidemic in Haiti will be a year old in October and is far from under control. As cases spiked across the country during the summer rainy season, the ranks of cholera relief workers grew thin. Too few patients reach healthcare facilities with enough time to be sure that treatment—simple rehydration in most cases—can restore them to health. Access to clean water and to modern sanitation is dwindling. We must redouble existing efforts at cholera prevention and care—case-finding and treatment, water and sanitation projects, education and surveillance—while simultaneously integrating vaccination into the ongoing response. Even prior to this epidemic it was clear that waterborne pathogens posed great risks to communities across the country, including those not affected directly by the January 2010 earthquake. All steps to protect Haiti’s vulnerable population needed, and still need, to be taken.

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The Impact of Change

By Dennis Altman | December 25, 2011

AIDS has now been with us for a quarter of a century, and there are people still alive who were among the first people to be diagnosed with HIV after the retrovirus was discovered and named in 1983. Think back to the world of that time: Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, and still locked in what seemed to be a permanent state of hostility with the USSR, whose collapse at the end of the decade was almost entirely unexpected. The greatest economic challenge to the United States was thought then to be Japan, and very few people anticipated the rapid rise of China.

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Instruments of Peace

By Leonard Rubenstein | December 24, 2011

As the hunt for Osama bin Laden began to focus on the now infamous compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the CIA desperately sought confirmation that he was there. The agency came up with an idea: hire a local doctor to conduct a fake vaccination campaign, which it hoped could lead to obtaining blood samples from bin Laden’s grandchildren that could be analyzed for a DNA match to bin Laden. One could dismiss the campaign as just another imaginative tactic used by the CIA in the search; the fact that it involved a population health ruse could be of no more significance than had the CIA hired agents to sell lottery tickets door to door in the neighborhood.

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