COVID-19: A need to revalue the first line of care: notes from the Tshamilemba Health Centre , Congo

  COVID-19 : Une nécessité de revaloriser la première ligne des soins Entre détection et protection au Centre de Santé Tshamilemba, Lubumbashi, République Démocratique du Congo   The government has been working on biological control measures such as laboratory research into viruses and vaccines. Their focus lies first and foremost on measures to change people’s […]

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COVID-19 : fears, anger, reflection and enlightenment

  The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has generated a lot of storm in the social media — much of it being misinformation or propaganda. Mainstream scientists and public officials have summarily dismissed them as fake or as conspiracy theories.  But it is fear of the pandemic at the root of this widespread misinformation. And behind […]

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Who are the peers in peer-review? A call to redefine

  Eighteen months, six leading journals and one published article later. This is the headline of the harrowing experience my colleagues and I recently survived. From all indication, this is not as harrowing as it gets. Just six journals! Some, I have since learnt have had to power through more. In other words, our experience […]

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Scaling Up Capacity for COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines

  Four months since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the Philippines, the number of cases has risen into the thousands. Testing capacity has expanded rapidly, but testing continues to limit the Philippines response. The Philippines has adopted a “whole of government, whole of society” approach to address this global pandemic, grouped around four […]

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Providing primary care in COVID-19 lockdown to rural, underserved areas of Rajasthan, India

  The first case of SARS-COV-2 was reported in India in 30th January 2020.  A few months down the line, the Government of India announced a sudden lockdown on  24th March. Following the lockdown, all local transport, private and public, came to a halt, private healthcare providers closed their clinics, and government health facilities significantly […]

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Loss of trust and reluctance in following COVID-19 protective measures in Iraq

  The Iraqi Kurdistan region imposed strong control measures against COVID-19 from the early stages of the outbreak. These measures included cross-border movement limitation with health screening that was followed by complete border closure, banning flights and COVID-19 testing for all people returning to the region from abroad. Furthermore, other measures were implemented, including the […]

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COVID-19 Experience Among Slum Dwellers In Nairobi: A Double Tragedy Or Useful Lesson For Public Health Reforms?

  While the devastating consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic have not yet been felt by many countries in Africa, the same is not true for many others . For people living in the slums of Nairobi, this disease and the resulting government response have only worsened their livelihood. Despite being a significant size of […]

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‘Invisible lives behind visible waste’: Experiences of sanitation workers and waste pickers in India

  India’s municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system rests on the back of a faceless workforce, comprising a myriad of actors: sanitation workers in the formal sector are contracted directly by the government municipalities and are responsible for sweeping the streets, cleaning drains and transporting the waste to landfills; door-to-door garbage collectors are often subcontracted […]

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