Johnson & Johnson’s office in Kenya will help coordinate the company’s global public health capabilities and resources to deliver sustainable, measurable impact against significant public health needs in the region. The team in Kenya will translate the company’s strategy into locally-executable programs that drive health impact in collaboration with local health delivery partners. 

The planet is facing a bevy of “wicked” problems, which threaten global destabilization. Issues such as climate change, food and water, biodiversity preservation, and pandemic disease cut across disciplines and borders and affect people at all levels of society. This new threat set requires cooperation between countries, but such challenges cannot be resolved by the same type of diplomacy that characterized the 20th century.

As the official response has struggled, the crisis has given birth to a global network of new humanitarians as Syrians on the ground and overseas have come together to find ways to get aid to their beleaguered country. Unorthodox but determined, inexperienced but with a deep knowledge of their country, they’ve created aid procurement and delivery systems handing everything from food aid to hospital management.

In northern Syria, a small core of Irish aid workers are among the group of international aid agencies helping to lessen the load for Um Mohammad and more than a million people caught between the warring sides. Aileen Wynne (25), from Raheen in Limerick, who studied human nutrition at University College Cork, became an aid worker after travelling to India. She has spent 16 months working with Syrian refugees.

Mammograms for women at risk for breast cancer, ultrasounds for expectant mothers and X-rays for injured and sick children. These diagnostic procedures are standard in U.S. hospitals and the basis for much of the medical care people receive, yet half the world's population has no access to such tests.

Pending government approval, a group of 35 doctors and nurses based in Shanghai will soon become the nation’s first medical team to join the World Health Organization’s emergency response system, specializing in disaster relief. [...] Beijing has since maintained its medical assistance to Africa ever since, renewing its commitment last year to send 1,500 medical professionals to the continent.

Growing public and private sector efforts have seen Taiwan emerge as a significant provider of international humanitarian assistance and medical aid around the world. Medical diplomacy plays an important role in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ efforts to strengthen relations with partner nations. 

International aid work is more dangerous than ever. While attacks on aid workers declined in 2014, they remain not far below the unprecedented level of attacks the previous year, according to the Aid Worker Security Report.