When restricting the movement of their citizens to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, low income countries should tailor measures to local socio-economic circumstances.
Representational image of an older person receiving treatment.
Videoblocks
It is not surprising that being unhealthy makes you more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. But what may worry you is just how many Americans are in this high-risk group.
An illegal Zimbawean immigrant crosses into South Africa.
EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook
Attempting to defeat these folk theories with science achieved little; the myth busters of the AIDS epidemic were talking past those they were trying to convince.
Children at window of a building in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Children will be vulnerable if vaccinations are postponed.
Photo by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
With recent calls for their use in combating COVID-19, there are concerns that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine might become unavailable to people who need them.
Unlike in wealthy nations, lockdowns are simply impossible in overcrowded conditions with no sanitation and high levels of poverty.
Health workers walk from house to house during vaccination campaign against polio in Kano, northwest Nigeria in 2017.
Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
Adequate numbers of healthy and motivated health professionals are also critical to governments’ effective responses to public health emergencies such as COVID-19.
Research participants want to know the results of the studies in which they participate.
Shutterstock
Findings that are effectively communicated can go a long way to serve the interests of the public. They can help to address social injustices or improve treatments offered to patients.
South Korea has been the quickest to bring the pandemic under control.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images
It is not all democracies that struggle to deal with the coronavirus; it is those in which the people do not feel the system works for them.
A staffer works on a ventilator-refurbishing assembly line at Bloom Energy in Sunnyvale, Calif. Bloom Energy makes hydrogen fuel cells but is now refurbishing old ventilators so hospitals can use them to treat coronavirus patients.
(Beth LaBerge/KQED via AP)
Researchers and public health officials still don’t know how widespread nor how deadly the coronavirus really is. Random testing is a way to quickly and easily learn this important information.
Somali women on a coronavirus awareness campaign.
Abdirazak Hussein/GettyImages
Some of the false claims about coronavirus may be harmless. But others can be potentially dangerous.
Ireland’s health minister, center, models social distancing at his nightly coronavirus press briefing March 27, 2020.
Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie/PA Images via Getty Images
When a government’s health messaging during a crisis is inconsistent or unrealistic, it engenders the kind of confusion, misinformation and non-cooperation seen in the US and UK.
Digital footprints.
Prasit photo/Moment via Getty Images
Cellphone data can show who coronavirus patients interacted with, which can help isolate infected people before they feel ill. But how digital contact tracing is implemented matters.
Scientists are better equipped to do ground-breaking research.
GettyImages
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand