Mind your language

“Rather than improving their response capacity and anticipating new challenges, health systems seem to be drifting from one short-term priority to another, increasingly fragmented and without a clear sense of direction.” This is from the World Health Organization’s world health report for 2008, Primary Health Care: Now More Than Ever, published this week (see News, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2109). This snappy quote appeared in a press release specifically designed to grab an editor’s attention. And grab my attention it did—for all the wrong reasons. It highlighted a current personal annoyance: global healthspeak. I’ve come to loathe …