Issue

Health

In Health, Pulitzer Center grantees delve into some of the world’s most pressing health issues and challenges. Featuring a wide range of topics from chronic illnesses to outbreaks and epidemics to reproductive health and public health systems, our reporting looks at the breadth of health issues found across the globe.

We also look at the global footprint of cancer, which kills more people than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. We examine the disproportionate burden placed on poorer countries, as well as the medical and business innovations that allow for treatment once thought too costly or too difficult to deliver.

Other projects look at mental health, including the trauma caused by conflicts like the wars in Syria and Yemen, the effects of pollution on communities, and safety and injury-related deaths, such as in our ongoing Roads Kill project.

By telling the stories of patients, caregivers, and scientists, our reporters are drawing outbreak comparisons and providing lessons for prevention. They are also taking on the challenge of communicating technical information to the lay ear, and ultimately filling the gap between the scientific and public understanding of health crises.

Health

Jamaica: Reflections on homophobia

Jamaica, to me, is a land of deep contradictions.

On one hand, it's a lovely, lush tropical country, blessed with sandy beaches, fantastic flowering shrubs, ripe mango and coconut trees, and inhabited by a strong, proud people who clearly share a basic sense of personal dignity and a deep-seated hospitality towards strangers. I found this to be true regardless of whom I was speaking with, be they rich or poor, educated or illiterate, straight or gay.

Mothers Of Ethiopia Part II: Escaping Child Marriage

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The first time Tadu Gelana's mother suggested she get married, Tadu thought she was kidding. Only 14 years old, Tadu had not yet finished school or had her first menstruation cycle. Tadu laughed at the suggestion. The second time her mother mentioned it, Tadu told her she wasn't interested.

Her mother did not relent.

Tadu's brother, who was about twice her age and had taken care of her for many years, had recently passed away. Tadu felt she should be grieving for the loss of her big brother, not preparing for a joyous wedding ceremony.

Mothers Of Ethiopia Part I: Zemzem’s Journey

JIMMA, Ethiopia — When Zemzem Moustafa went into labor with her fifth child - at age 30 - she could sense a problem. Living in a thatched-roof hut in Ilebabo, a rural village in western Ethiopia, she and her husband walked to the local health post. A health extension worker there could tell that the baby was in the wrong position, but the worker could not help Zemzem and referred her to the hospital. And so Zemzem's journey began, one that ends in tragedy for thousands of women in Ethiopia each year.

Jamaica's Gays Worship In the Closet

It takes just 15 minutes to set up an underground church.

Two boxes and a white sheet make up the pulpit. The altar is a card table. Folding chairs constitute the pews. Then Rev. Robert Griffin, a solidly built gay American minister in his mid-40s, unpacks a battered cardboard box; inside is a wooden chalice, two candle holders, a communion plate and a dog-eared copy of the King James Bible. Add a pianist warming up on an electric keyboard and suddenly an empty meeting room is transformed into the Kingston branch of the Sunshine Cathedral, Jamaica's only gay church.

How AIDS Became a Caribbean Crisis

We may be accustomed to thinking of AIDS as most rampant in distant parts of the world like Africa, India, and South Asia. But these days the epidemic is flaring up a bit closer to home, in the Caribbean. Indeed, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adults there, and the Caribbean's rate of new infections is the second highest in the world, following just behind Sub-Saharan Africa.