A radical proposal for development assistance for health

Olusoji Adeyi starts his book on global health with an epigraph quoting Nestor, a character in Homer's Odyssey. In the ancient Greek epic poem, Nestor has returned home from fighting in the Trojan war and he promises to tell all of what he knows happened. From such an epigraph, it is plausible to expect that the book will recount a comparable tale of an epic war. Adeyi recently retired from a long career at senior levels of global health institutions, the last of which was at the World Bank as Director of Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice. Adeyi's choice of war as a metaphor for his career in global health challenges the pervasive rhetoric of global health as an enterprise of benevolence, altruism, and equity. It is also important to note that Adeyi is claiming the role of the primary narrator of an epic tale. In the board rooms, government offices, and power tables of global health policy making, a Black African doctor is likely to have encountered and perceived things that others may not have.