Eskild Petersen, Ben Marais, Marion Koopmans, Peter Mwaba, Danny Asogun, Moses J. Bockarie, Lucille Blumberg, Delia Goletti, Seif Al Abri, Alessandra Scagliarini, L Simonsen, Francine Ntoumi, Peter S. Nyasulu, David S Hui, David N Dürrheim, Martin P. Grobusch, Alimuddin Zumla
In his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe observes: “Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered” [1].
In his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe observes: “Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered” [1]. Global health has likewise come to revere achievement—success stories, elimination targets, and aspirational end dates. But Achebe’s novel traces how a seemingly stable society disintegrates when its organising principles erode. The tragedy is not sudden; it is cumulative, and triggered by colonial forces outside of the local culture.