2020 John Nkengasong – Africa CDC: A New Public Health Order

The 28th annual Pumphandle Lecture was delivered on Thursday 10th September 2020, by Dr John Nkengasong, founding Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lecture was delivered remotely, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to a worldwide audience of more than 300 Society members and guests. The Speaker …

2019 Eliza Manningham-Buller – Promoting Medical Science in an Age of Scepticism

PUMPHANDLE LECTURE-PROMOTING MEDICAL SCIENCE IN AN AGE OF SCEPTICISM4th September 2019 Transcript: When I was asked to give the Reith Lectures in 2011 (I no longer usually mention alongsideAung San Suu Kyi), I was flattered and accepted at once. There following months ofscribbling and scratching out, of trying to avoid platitudes and clichés and to …

2018 Dr Joanne Liu – The Cost of Fear: Humanitarian Crises in the Age of Anxiety

Listen to the audio recording The 26th Annual Pumphandle Lecture was delivered on Thursday 6thth September 2018, by Dr Joanne Liu, International President of Médecins Sans Frontiers / Doctors without Borders. Dr Liu’s presentation described, and then drew lessons from, three recent health crises in which MSF has been prominently involved, and which have captured …

2017 Dr Richard Horton – Life and Death in 2100: Health, History and Human Contingency

The 25th Annual Pumphandle Lecture was delivered on 12th September 2017, by Dr Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of The Lancet. This was a broad and passionate critique of global heath and today’s world. Dr Horton began by emphasising a fundamental principle of evolutionary biology which guides selection for altruistic behaviour: “rB>C” where r is …

2016 Dr Paul Spiegel – The Syrian conflict and its effect on the future of humanitarian response: We need a new pumphandle

The 24th Annual Pumphandle Lecture was delivered on 8th September 2016, by Dr Paul Spiegel, recently appointed Director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previous to this appointment, Dr Spiegel had spent 14 years as Deputy Director of the Division of Programme Support and Management …

2015 Atul Gawande – On removing the pumphandle: innovation and implementation

The 23rd annual Pumphandle Lecture was given on the 8th of October 2015 by Dr Atul Gawande, Professor of Surgery and of Public Health at Harvard, well known author (eg The Checklist Manifesto and Being Mortal), and Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint centre for health systems innovation, as well as Chairman ofLifebox, a …