Dear HIFA colleagues,
I welcome the input from Dr Najeeb Al-Shorbaji. For some reason unknown to me I did not receive the postings of Gauri Divan or Elaine Toomey or (unless they were less recent and I missed them) Rhona MacDonald and David Southall.
Why do some of these postings go into the RSS feed at <https://www.hifa.org/rss-feeds/17> https://www.hifa.org/rss-feeds/17, to
which the moderator, Dr Neil Pakenham-Walsh, has kindly drawn our attention, but not into the daily mailing? I am saddened that Dr Najeeb Al-Shorbaji's previous letters were not published on HIFA, but welcome that his intention to leave HIFA was not implemented. I too considered leaving HIFA owing to silence on Gaza, but I am assured by Neil's confirmation of full HIFA
inclusiveness. Could there be a technological glych? [*see note below]
Prof Joseph Ana, has quoted Martin Luther King's 'All humans are born equal', but birth is the end of our equality of opportunity, whether that is in health or worldwide concern. I lament that three of my fellow Britons were killed in Gaza this week, but their deaths and those of their colleagues foreign to Gaza have brought much more publicity and pressure to
end this carnage than the killing of over 32,000 Gazans. It's a reminder of what we saw when Covid-19 struck: the vaccine and PPE was overstocked in the rich countries and the poorest got none. Elaine Toomey asks "Where are our voices? Where is our action?".
Best wishes
Stewart Britten
HIFA profile: Stewart Britten is advisor to the British NGO, HealthProm, on its project to reduce maternal and child deaths in Northern Afghanistan. He has worked for the reduction of institutionalisation of babies and small children in Russia by introduction of parent support programmes. stewart.britten AT zen.co.uk
[*Note from HIFA moderator (NPW): All messages on the RSS feed are sent to all HIFA members. Stewart, I note that you receive a daily compilation. I also note that the messages sent by Gauri, Elaine, David and Rhona were all compiled in the same daily compilation (Summary for April 3, 2024). (Rhona was a co-author with David rather than being a separate message). I occasionally get messages from HIFA members who say they haven't received such-and-such a message, or even that they haven't received messages for several days. The usual reason is that the messages are being blocked as spam, either within people's own email software (in which case it may be in the Junk folder) or because email providers are blocking messages upstream. Hotmail, for example, generally blocks HIFA messages. Unfortunately there is not much we can do about it, other than consistently maintain our own guidelines on messages, so that they are not categorised as spam by our readers. As moderator, my responsibility is to uphold these guidelines as best as I can. HIFA does not carry messages unless they are (at least in part) relevant to the HIFA remit. For further information on HIFA guidelines for messages, see: https://www.hifa.org/forums/how-use-hifa-forums ]
