A letter in The Lancet: The truth about decolonising global health worth spreading.
With any myth about decolonising global health (as Richard Horton describes it), always question intent, dissent, lament, and discontent. Then, remember the wise words of Frederick Douglass, “power concedes nothing without a demand, it never has and it never will”.
In the words of Chinua Achebe, we are living in a time when the “lions have their own historians”, and they have finally arrived to take the stage to tell the story of the hunt and the stories of their struggle, their own way, as history has glorified the hunter for too long. Those who stand in the way of this moral conscience are part of the problem, not the solution.
Decolonising global health is an unconventional movement, told from the point of view of everyday people, and soaked in the struggles of their daily living, the bravery even, of the lions. The process is also so much more than a destination—it is a journey.
I state this knowing that this movement still has struggles ahead. There is a lot of work to do before anyone or any group can claim to decolonise something as rugged and dynamic or complex as global health. This movement might not bear fruit even in one's lifetime, but at least generations will know that with global health, there was a struggle. We might fail, but at least we struggled to tell our stories, our way. This is the truth about decolonising global health worth spreading.
