The potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic is enormous. But draconian policies to tackle the virus also have colossal costs. Ignoring the trade-offs could land us with one of the worst possible outcomes. A landmark study by London’s Imperial College on death impacts from different policies helped change the minds of US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson towards implementation of lockdown policies. It showed that without any such policies, COVID-19 would kill a half-million people in Britain and 2.2 million people in the US.

With news around the world focussing on the Corona crisis, it's easy to forget that one of the most common killers in Ghana and globally is a disease we already have a treatment for: tuberculosis. Approximately one-quarter of the world’s population has been infected, although the majority don’t ever develop active disease. Individuals with tuberculosis often remain undiagnosed and untreated, able to carry it on and infect others. According to WHO estimates, TB is responsible for 5% of total deaths every year in Ghana. It affects mostly the working-age population, with 73% of cases between the...

Cooking over an open fire or with traditional stoves is widely practiced in Ghana, but these common methods carry serious risks. Emissions caused by the use of solid fuels such as wood and charcoal are one of the leading health concerns in many developing countries. Globally, over 1.6 million people died in 2017 from diseases related to poor household air quality, and in Ghana, 10,000 lives are lost to this cause annually.

Since 2000, Ghana’s development has been a real success story. The country has witnessed sustained economic growth, with real GDP per capita increasing by 3.5% per year on average and extreme poverty levels falling by almost 80% according to the Ghana Statistical Service. However, in recent years poverty levels have barely changed nationally, and it appears to be worsening in certain parts of the country. The rural savannah area contains 75% of the country’s extreme poor, with 36% of the population living in extreme poverty, up from 27% in 2013. Remaining clusters of poverty will be harder...

If you listen to the media, a green automotive future has arrived and a tsunami of electric cars is out­selling petrol and diesel around the world, transforming the planet and solving climate change. We need a reality check. Battery-powered electric vehicles are fairly popular in urban China and California, as well as a few countries that heavily subsidise their drivers. But globally, fewer than 0.3 per cent of all cars are pure electric, and across Europe, BMW says, customers don’t want them.

Nutrition in the pre-natal stage and early childhood is fundamental to guarantee overall health and well-being. It brings multiple benefits to the economy through a lowered rate of disease and a boost in productivity throughout life. Yet, Ghana faces many challenges and nutrition is just one of them. There are many potentially incredible solutions to challenges from malaria to education, from better transportation to more productive agriculture.

Scenes of devastation from Australia’s fires have been heartbreaking. How do we stop this suffering? For many campaigners and politicians, the answer is clear-cut: drastic climate policies. When we examine the evidence, this simple answer falls short. Australia is the world’s most fire-prone continent. In 1900, 11 per cent of its surface burned annually. These days, 5 per cent of the country burns every year. By the end of the century, if we do not stop climate change, higher temperatures and an increase in aridity will likely mean a 0.7 percentage point increase in burnt area, an increase...

Over the past year, climate campaigners didn’t grow tired of claiming that the fossil fuel industry received “a whopping $5.2 trillion in subsidies” in 2017, equivalent to 6.5 percent of global GDP. Quoting an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that suggests the US alone wastes $649 billion annually, Rolling Stone declared that “the United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending.“