At this year’s Medicus Mundi Switzerland Network’s conference, young people from Zimbabwe, Paraguay, India, Germany and Switzerland demonstrated that the battle for sexual and reproductive health and rights can only be won if young people themselves take on the responsibility for programmes and projects. There is ample evidence that overcoming young people’s health problems across the globe is hampered by the lack of effective communication about sex and sexuality. This means young people prefer to suffer in silence to avoid shame rather than to seek advice, information and help. Read for yourself the inspiring contributions from our young speakers in the current edition of our MMS Bulletin. (Photo: Timothy Choy-695130-unsplash)

Inequity is one of the strongest drivers of poor health within a population. Health equity resonates with the SDGs’ overarching principle of leaving no one behind and the implicit moral imperative of achieving social justice. Health inequities are systematic differences in the health status of different population groups related to, for example, poverty, disability, race, class and gender. These inequities have significant social and economic costs both to individuals and to population groups as a whole and are judged to be avoidable, unfair and unjust. (World Health Organisation: Health Equity)