I recently visited Mongolia.

As a child, Outer Mongolia was a mystical destination, remote as Timbuktu, frigid as Siberia, populated with superhero characters like the great Genghis Khan (‘Chinggis’ to his countrymen).

I had been to Mongolia five years earlier as part of a WHO project, so I knew something of their health system.

What immediately struck me this time was a sense of deja vu — and not from the last time I was there.