A woman walks past a graffiti by Anthony Kihoro in Kenya sensitising people about the coronavirus.
Dennis Sigwe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Recommendations around mask usage are confusing. The science isn’t. Evidence shows that masks are extremely effective to slow the coronavirus and may be the best tool available right now to fight it.
NZ$4.3 billion will go some way to patch up long-standing cracks in New Zealand’s health system. But COVID-19 has shown NZ’s regional approach to health isn’t good enough against a nationwide threat.
South Africa’s disaster management plan targets the most vulnerable. But it needs to respond in a more deliberate way when it comes to people with disabilities.
President Donald Trump has been widely slammed for mishandling the COVID-19 crisis, costing the US dearly.
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Ramaphosa’s call for a new social compact will fall on deaf ears unless there are some fundamental changes to the way in which the pandemic is being managed.
In the United Kingdom, where the population is now confined, a man wearing a mask walks in the street on March 26, 2020.
Oli Scarff/AFP
Fabrice Flipo, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School
The pandemic, in that it represents a major and therefore exceptional risk, calls for a response built collectively, and not by a small group of experts or decision-makers.
There has been a rapid redirection of resources towards COVID-19-related research. In the long term, this resource reallocation is likely to result in budget cuts in all research areas.
Political polarisation remains clear in responses to COVID-19.
Oliver Contreras/EPA
Too much ultraviolet radiation is dangerous for human health. Excessive exposure can cause skin ageing and sunburn and can induce melanoma, cataracts, ocular melanoma, and immunodeficiency.
A nearly deserted street in the city of Nice, France, on May 6, the 51st day of lockdown there. Europe’s method of reopening is markedly different from the U.S. plan.
Getty Images / Valery Hache
Early reports by the National Health Laboratory Service indicated that it had the capacity to do 30,000 tests a day. But capability to do so has not materialised.
Chronic pain is everyone’s problem. It’s costly, debilitating and, according to new statistics, increasingly common. Reversing the trend is achieveable but far from easy.
Workers from Kinross Gold Mine, South Africa.
Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images
The threat posed by COVID-19 on mines is considerable. The main reasons are cramped working conditions underground, transportation in packed cages, and a high incidence of other respiratory diseases.
Lack of technology infrastructure is a barrier to mobile healthcare in Nigeria
Stefan Heunis/AFP via Getty Images
Mobile technology has great potential to improve healthcare in Nigeria but government must provide regulatory framework.
A public health worker takes details from a man volunteering to be tested for COVID-19 in the bustling Kawangware market in Nairobi.
Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images
As COVID-19 cases continue to increase in Kenya, there is a looming threat for escalated disease and death due to the many people with chronic conditions.
Can social distancing and lockdown
can work in South Africa’s townships and informal settlements?
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South Africa’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was one of ‘intervene first and ask questions later’. Now is the time for government to state clearly what its strategic endgame is.
People, some wearing masks, enjoy a walk in a park in Rome as Italy, the first nation to impose a nationwide lockdown against the coronavirus, begins to reopen – slowly.
Franco Origlia/Getty Images
It’s possible to evaluate countries’ readiness to lift their lockdowns, based on how well they managed the first wave of the pandemic, and how ready they are for a digital economy.
A cashier works wearing a face mask in a supermarket on April 15, 2020 near Lyon.
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP
Emilie Counil, Ined (Institut national d'études démographiques) et Myriam Khlat, Ined (Institut national d'études démographiques)
In addition to the elderly and health workers, those holding front-line jobs are particularly exposed. Infection risk and aggravating co-morbidities could compound social inequalities in time of crisis.
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
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne