Global health is political; can it also be compassionate?

We need a renewed vision for global health as well as a renewed vision of ourselves in it. If, as researchers and practitioners, we spend too much time protecting our careers and our funding sources at any costs, and too little time with the people we aim to help, we will struggle to both recognise their suffering as suffering and accept the extent to which we can be profoundly mistaken in what these people need. To improve health for all, we need to create global health systems that help us, or even demands of us, to feel the true suffering of those women, men, girls, and boys that these systems aim to help. We look forward to a value-based approach to global health that aims to do things with people, rather than to people.