Sex and gender matter to health equity. The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) illustrates this in the clearest terms. We are pleased that the Lancet Gender and COVID-19 Working Group, UN Women, UNFPA and others are bringing attention to the gendered elements of the outbreak. The impact on women in particular has been […]
Latest articles
Flattening the curve of COVID-19 infodemic: experiences, not conjectures
COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020. Ever since, the disease has spiralled across the world with more than 169 countries affected. We are essentially looking at a new challenge and at an unprecedented scale. The global health community has responded by putting in its best foot […]
What the “Global North” needs to learn about COVID-19 ?
There are times where our world can feel so different and certain diseases seem relegated to other times and other places. As Covid-19 spreads widely in the United States, predictions are that it will tax our health system to its limit, and, cause health workers to face unprecedented challenges in their duty to patients. There […]
Ethical Pandemic Control
What makes the difference in whether actions in the face of a pandemic such COVID-19 are perceived as ethical or unethical? And why does this matter to the trajectory of a pandemic? Traditionally in public health ethics, five factors have played a prominent role in ethically responding to an epidemic. Organism biology Infectiousness and […]
Public Health Communication for COVID-19: Can professional health associations in India do more?
The glimmer of hope provided by the damping down of the COVID-19 epidemic curve in China is being compensated for by the rapid rise of the number of cases and deaths in Italy, Iran, and South Korea, with WHO’s risk assessment in China, the Regional Level and the Global Level remaining ‘Very High’. India, […]
COVID-19 in Ecuador: high alert, limited information
With only 17 officially announced cases, Ecuador recently declared COVID-19 a health emergency, but the announcement was not backed by precise scientific information to fully understand the reasons behind this decision or a contingency plan. Because it was the third country in the region to identify SARS-CoV-2, on February 29, the Ecuadorian government could […]
Protecting China’s healthcare workers during COVID-19
With over a hundred thousand COVID-19 cases across 100 countries , the World Health Organization (WHO), has declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (1). COVID-19 originated from Wuhan in the Hubei Province in China, the epicenter of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak since December 2019. COVID-19 is highly contagious and […]
COVID-19 and the Global Health Workforce
Following the second meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, the novel Corona virus or COVID-19 outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This has negatively impacted the global economy and global travel, with growing concerns for preparedness of health systems worldwide and its […]
The White Savior Industrial Complex in Global Health
Introduction: Global health, once an obscure field of practice and research, is rapidly gaining prominence. Many training institutions have responded to the high demand for a global health “experience” by providing short-term forays into exotic locales. This phenomenon can be dangerous, feeding into what writer Teju Cole described as the White Savior Industrial Complex (WSIC). […]
Learning through partnerships to build stronger health systems for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)
Increasingly aid is moving towards a bilateral partnership model of institutional health partnerships to complement multi-lateral efforts through bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO).1 The UK government, in its recent aid strategy2, set out a move towards partnership approaches such as the Better Health Programme (BHP); a co-developed programme of technical collaboration […]