COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting people from ethnic minorities in the UK and other high‑income countries, exposing longstanding inequalities for minority and marginalised communities. These disparities have been particularly evident in the UK, where Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. An official inquiry commissioned by the UK […]
Tag: COVID-19
Historic Economic Downfalls and Cancer Care: The forecast post-COVID
The coronavirus pandemic, a global fight we have not seen since the previous century, undoubtedly has resulted in disastrous effects on the UK and global economy. On 12th August, the UK economy declared an official recession for the first time in 11 years as the economy shrank by 20.4%, the biggest reduction ever seen. […]
COVID-19 in Kenya: 150 days of learning
How does one fight an invisible, insidious, and all but intractable foe worth 30 kb in size? In Kenya, the hundred and fiftieth day of COVID-19 passed on 9th August 2020, nine months after the virus manifested itself in the Chinese province of Wuhan. The pandemic has brought forth some key learnings in the […]
How contextual issues are jeopardising the COVID-19 response in Mali ?
On 25 March 2020, Mali reported its first imported cases of COVID-19. To curb the spread of the disease, the government had quickly introduced a series of initiatives. These were shutting down borders, imposing a nationwide curfew, closing schools, and establishing a call center to report suspected COVID-19 cases and acquire health information. People […]
Saving lives from COVID-19 is everyone’s responsibility
In the past 6 months, scientists and researchers across the globe have made astonishing progress in advancing the development of vaccines for COVID-19. We are also getting much closer to finding effective treatment options. In clinical development terms, the pace of these efforts is unprecedented, with multiple promising vaccine candidates in or near the […]
Ghana during COVID-19 : Reflections on Social Capital in Community Participation
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the newly emergent coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has hit Ghana with full blown community transmission to the shock of many policy makers. Effective measures to reduce the transmission of the virus require active support from the population. Ghana’s COVID-19 response plan takes a comprehensive cross-sectoral approach, based on […]
“I can’t breathe” in Kurdistan: Oxygen shortage & COVID-19
On the early hours of June 10th, a nine-year-old boy from Kifri in Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) died from apparent respiratory distress. His family told media outlets that the district general hospital he was taken to did not have enough oxygen supplies to save his life. They also claimed that his father had to […]
COVID-19 in northern Uganda: Resistance, defiance and hospitalising asymptomatic cases
Northern Uganda is emerging from a prolonged civil war which lasted about two decades[1]. During this period many people were killed by the warring groups and the state army, displaced from their livelihood, infrastructure such as hospitals[i][ii]were destroyed[iii]. During this civil war in 2000-2001 that Gulu district had an experience with a plague caused […]
COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines: Enhancing Testing Productivity
The Philippines moved quickly to expand COVID-19 testing capacity, but much of this new capacity remains idle. Emphasis must now shift to increasing productivity, particularly by improving the flow of samples to the laboratories. Preceding entry: Scaling Up Capacity for COVID-19 Testing in the Philippines When the first COVID-19 case was detected in […]
COVID-19 and Convalescent Plasma: when compassion and ethics are in conflict.
“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.” – Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), English Author, Poet and Writer. The current pandemic of COVID19 came upon the world suddenly. With little knowledge about SARS CoV2, armed with only with some selected data, extrapolated from SARS, MERS, the world […]