“To decolonise global health is to remove all forms of supremacy within all spaces of global health practice, within countries, between countries, and at the global level.
Supremacy is not restricted to White supremacy or male domination. It concerns what happens not only between people from high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) but also what happens between groups and individuals within HICs and within LMICs.
Supremacy is there, glaringly, in how global health organisations operate, who runs them, where they are located, who holds the purse strings, who sets the agenda, and whose views, histories, and knowledge are taken seriously.
Supremacy is seen in persisting disregard for local and Indigenous knowledge, pretense of knowledge, refusal to learn from places and people too often deemed “inferior”, and failure to see that there are many ways of being and doing.
Will global health survive its decolonisation? Perhaps. But only if its practitioners commit to its true transformation..."
Seye Abimbola & Madhu Pai