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A British think tank ranks Estonia’s prosperity 21st highest in the world By 328shares The Legatum Institute, a British think tank, ranks Estonia’s prosperity 21st in the world among 167 ranked countries. According to the think tank, Estonia performs highly in the natural environment and the economic quality categories of the index, but is the weakest in the health category. However, the institute says the biggest improvement compared with a decade ago came in the health category. The institute also notes that since 2010, Estonia has moved up in the rankings by three places. The Legat...

Toggle open close Global trade freedom has fallen for the third straight year and is at its lowest level since 2006. For countries around the world, that means higher tariffs and nontariff barriers than in the past. For families and businesses, it means that trading is more difficult and costly. The downward trend in trade freedom started well before the coronavirus pandemic, but a worldwide combination of pandemic-related business shutdowns and economic struggles has caused global goods trade to contract. Initially, many countries responded to the pandemic and increased demand for medical go...

Catastrophic expenditure for health: from antiquity to today Image: rudall30/Shutterstock Two thousand years ago, the story goes, an itinerant carpenter-prophet in Palestine met a woman who had suffered with a bleeding condition for twelve years. She had gone to see this man because she had already “suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had.” Today, we’ve given that a name: “Catastrophic expenditure for health.” And that concept—financial catastrophe in health care—feels quite new. It wasn’t until 2009 that the US had an estimate for the pr...

Towards swasth Bharat Health spend must translate into better outcomes India today is on the cusp of 75 years of Independence amidst a global pandemic, a black swan event that has brought to the forefront an urgent need for stronger health systems and re-emphasised that our biggest resource is our people. Appropriate health policy-pivoting is evident in Budget 2021-22 that aims to break free from the shackles of Covid-19-induced vulnerabilities. The Budget has committed to an outlay of ₹2,23,846 crore in health and well-being for 2021-22, a 137 per cent increase over this year’s Budget Es...

South Africa’s Covid-19 responses are marred by policy paradoxes. How does a country with one of the most sophisticated health systems in Africa account for the highest number of Covid-19 fatalities? This brief argues that contemporary approaches to South Africa’s social, domestic, and foreign policy responses should be viewed through the theoretical lenses of racial capitalism—a racially hierarchical political economy constituting war, militarism, imperialist accumulation, expropriation by domination, and labour superexploitation. Departing from current paradigms, the brief advocates t...