Pri's blog

A post by Sue Desmond-Hellman , CEO at  the  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on LinkedIn that randomly found its way into  my inbox is titled "The latest weapon in the fight against disease might surprise you" - hence the title of this  blog. Desmond-Hellman makes the case for data as a resource  for turning the tide on a number of conditions.  Nothing  surprising there.  But it seems having spent much of her life as a clinical scientist, white coated (I assume) in medical laboratories she has had an amazing light bulb moment and realised that "non-medical data " can be  used "to complement medical research and  transform the lives of entire populations". And how did she come to this realisation? Because of, in her words, a "great example" that she got to  hear about in Cincinnati, Ohio in the good old USA.    What has happened there?   " By combining existing data  from a variety of  sources, a tea...

(post prompted by a recent article on Upali Wijewardene in roar.lk) Somewhere around April 1970, an awkward young woman, just turned seventeen, got into the terminal bus at Athens airport to board the TWA plane. She was on her way home after three months in the USA, Switzerland, Italy and Greece. She had been Sri Lanka’s delegate to the World Youth Forum, and had spent this time with other young people from 28 different countries and American host families in and around New York.  She was a little homesick, excited about returning home to her new boyfriend, and unconscious that the time away had transformed her into a much more politically aware, critical and independent  person with global friendships that were to last a life time!   On the bus, standing just ahead of her, she sees a young Sinhalese man with a backpack and address label that suggested he lived in her neighbourhood, in Thurstan Road.  With her new found confidence she accosts him, s...