“Things Fall Apart”: The Unravelling of Global Health Governance and the Imperative for Action Preserving Infectious Disease Prevention and Control

Abstract

In his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe observes: “Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered” [1]. Global health has likewise come to revere achievement—success stories, elimination targets, and aspirational end dates. But Achebe’s novel traces how a seemingly stable society disintegrates when its organising principles erode. The tragedy is not sudden; it is cumulative, and triggered by colonial forces outside of the local culture.