Learning from now

The Grand Challenges annual meeting, organised and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners from around the world, celebrates innovation, research and global collaboration to tackle pressing problems in health. After having the meeting virtually for two years, this year it was back in person. I was delighted to be back and could not wait to see old friends and mentors I had not seen in a while. But I was also eager to learn about new research and to make new connections with scholars, entrepreneurs and public health practitioners from around the world.

There was another reason for my excitement. One of the major themes of the conference this year was analysing the impact of humanitarian crises on global health — a topic dear to me and an area of my own research. The very first panel, on the opening day, was on this topic. Chaired by Professor Paul Spiegel of Johns Hopkins, the two panelists represented two different dimensions of the challenges faced by vulnerable communities. Dr Ann Burton, chief of public health from UNHCR, spoke from her own experience as a leader at the global agency charged to protect, help and support refugees and forced migrants. Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe, Director General of the National Institute of Biomedicine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, spoke about his experience managing multiple outbreaks of Ebola and other diseases in his country. Most of the Q&A was what one would expect — it was about global partnership, solidarity, the impact of climate change and preparing for the unknown. But then, towards the end of the discussion, Dr Muyembe said something that surprised me. He spoke about his conviction that what he needed to manage Ebola crises was not doctors and medical professionals but humanists and social scientists. He went on to elaborate how the presence of social scientists helped him and his team understand fears and anxieties among the people about the disease and the wards — where people just went to die — and how engagement of social scientists helped Dr Muyembe’s team overcome Ebola in the Congo. Dr Muyembe is not the only person, in charge of managing a serious medical crisis, who has expressed such views. The former director of the US National Institutes of Health on his farewell tour had shared a similar sentiment about his reflections on Covid-19 pandemic.

As I listened to Dr Muyembe talk about his approach to crisis management, I thought about the ongoing series of crises in Pakistan. Ours is not simply a political crisis or an economic downturn, but a crisis where nearly all trust in individuals and institutions is lost. Ours is a crisis where fact and fiction have lost meaning, where polarisation has created deep and wide wedges in relationships, and where the life of a non-celebrity has lost all its value. If Dr Muyembe and Dr Collins need humanists and social scientists to make sense in a medical crisis, should we not have more humanists and social scientists to help us navigate our social and political crises?

To some, it may seem naïve to talk about scholarship when we are so close to a complete breakdown of social structure. But at this time, more than ever, we need historians and ethicists, philosophers and anthropologists, and other humanists and social scientists, to make sense of things, and to provide guidance and insight. We do not need inflammatory youtubers or Twitter warriors, but sane voices that ground their arguments in careful thought, reflection and ethical reasoning. Yet, in a society that aggressively underfunds and undervalues scholarship in humanities and social sciences, it is no surprise that such voices are few, and likely to be fewer in the future. One day when we will pick up the pieces of the rubble from our present moment to rebuild our future, and write the next big plan for our development, I hope we will realise that no amount of investment in technology alone can protect us from our worst instincts. To protect the most cherished values of our humanity, we desperately need more humanists.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2022.

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