Takondwa Chimowa, Stephen Hall, and Bernadette O’Hare As governments around the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with a range of policies aimed at mitigating the economic fallout, we argue that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should prioritize public money creation over foreign borrowing. Experience shows that the cost of servicing foreign debt diverts resources from public services and can undermine fundamental economic, social and cultural rights, such as the…
Global Health in the Age of COVID-19: Responsive Health Systems Through a Right to Health Fund
Volume 22/1, June 2020, pp 199 – 2908 PDF Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Allan Maleche, Alessandra Nilo, Fogue Foguito, Umunyana Rugege, Sasha Stevenson, Githinji Gitahi, Ana Lorena Ruano, Michele Barry, Sara Hossain, Franciscka Lucien, Itai Rusike, Martin Hevia, Ala Alwan, Edwin Cameron, Paul Farmer, Walter Flores, Adila Hassim, Rosemary Mburu, Joia Mukherjee, Moses Mulumba, Dainius Puras, and Mirta Roses Periago Abstract We propose that a Right to Health…
COVID-19: Restricting Health Workers’ Free Speech has a Chilling Effect
Nirmalya Chaudhuri Various governments around the world have chosen to stifle freedom of speech and expression, especially that of health workers, in an attempt to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The tragic fate of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who was compelled to retract his statements about the spread of the virus, did not set alarm bells ringing. Then entrenched democracies such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and India…
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Upholding Rights Under COVID-19: The Respectful Maternity Care Charter
R. Rima Jolivet, Charlotte E Warren, Pooja Sripad, Elena Ateva, Jewel Gausman, Kate Mitchell, Hagar Palgi Hacker, Emma Sacks, and Ana Langer The COVID-19 pandemic has strained health systems and exacerbated system deficiencies and subpopulation vulnerabilities, thus “exposing the damaging impact of inequities, in every society.”1 It has also dramatically altered maternal newborn health (MNH) care delivery; some of the efforts to curb the virus violate the rights of women,…
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COVID-19 Economy vs Human Rights: A Misleading Dichotomy
Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. In a rapidly evolving situation, states are trying—with different levels of commitment and effectiveness—to curb the progress of the disease. While the virus is a threat to the rights to life and health, the human rights impact of the crisis goes well beyond medical and public health concerns. The health crisis itself…
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Gaol Fever: What COVID-19 Tells us about the War on Drugs
Rick Lines, Naomi Burke-Shyne, and Giada Girelli “In every situation, where a number of people are crowded together, whether in ships, hospitals, or prisons, unless the strictest attention be paid to cleanliness, and to a free ventilation or circulation of air, a fever soon or later breaks out amongst them, of a very contagious nature, and attended with very fatal effects”.[1] So begins the account of Dr James Carmichael Smyth…
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A Virtual Roundtable on COVID-19 and Human Rights with Human Rights Watch Researchers
PDF Joseph J. Amon and Margaret Wurth Introduction International human rights law guarantees everyone the right to the highest attainable standard of health and obligates governments to take steps to prevent threats to public health and to provide medical care to those who need it. Human rights law also recognizes that in the context of serious public health threats and public emergencies threatening the life of the nation, restrictions on…
COVID-19: Restricted Internet Impacts on Health in Kashmir
Adi Radhakrishnan Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has commanded the world’s attention and the international community, civil society, and governments have collaborated on information dissemination campaigns to mitigate its impact. Past public health emergencies have taught us that a lack of health information and the distribution of misinformation have deleterious effects in achieving prevention, detection, and treatment goals.[1] Ultimately, access to timely and accurate information is necessary to provide…
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COVID-19 Health Disparities Expose Systemic Racism against African Americans
Prem Misir African American communities in the United States have always suffered health disparities compared to white Americans. COVID-19 impacts are continuing this pattern, and exposing human rights failings. The Washington Post reported that “…in Illinois, a disparity nearly identical to Michigan’s exists at the state level, but the picture becomes far starker when looking at data just from Chicago, where black residents have died at a rate six times…
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Anti-Roma Racism is Spiraling During COVID-19 Pandemic
Margareta Matache and Jacqueline Bhabha There is a new global comity taking shape. Across the world, from the markets of Wuhan to the streets of New York, Rome, Rio, and Delhi, people are sharing the experience of facing the COVID-19 pandemic as a health, social, and economic threat. But there is a darker side to this collective danger—a license to unleash racism against stigmatized groups. We have seen this at…
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