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Training for Community Health Workers embraces the new normal
A Shasthya Kormis community health worker uses Dishari to share up-to-date information on COVID-19 with her community. Image Credit: Abdullah Al Kafi Community health workers (CHWs) regularly bring essential health services and education right to people’s doorsteps. Leveraging their lived experience and understanding of local realities, they are often the first point of care for…
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Teaching disease ecology in-person is fun again (but not without challenges)!
Students in my class collecting ticks at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge Change is hard, whichever way you’re changing. It always involves unexpected surprises, both good and bad, and extra work to accommodate and adapt to changing circumstances. I learned this lesson again this year, teaching my Disease Ecology capstone class again during Spring quarter. The…
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Maximizing researcher contributions to science and policy
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay Individual researchers are typically eager to make significant contributions to science and to policy. They are often supported in their efforts to do so by the institutions for which they work and the countries in which they live. A recent article in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research (IJHPR),…
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Antimicrobial stewardship before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
World Health Organisation (WHO) Slogan for Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2022. Photo credit Rasha Abdelsalam Elshenawy A Possible Solution for Antimicrobial Resistance In a blog for World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, Rasha Abdelsalam Elshenawy, Dr Nikkie Umaru, and Dr Zoe Aslanpour discuss their study investigating the factors affecting the Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) implementation in acute care settings…
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Bill Gates suggests sensible technical steps to prevent the next pandemic
I was recently traveling abroad with family this summer. Two days after arrival, we woke up with sore throat and fever, having contracted COVID-19. I obviously overestimated the immune protection provided by two doses of mRNA vaccine, and previous exposures, and underestimated the infectiousness of this pathogen, and made the mistake of not wearing a…
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World War C – a review of a book by Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon, Associate Professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine, and the chief medical correspondent at CNN. In 2021, he published a book titled “World War C: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One“. I chose his book as the next one…
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Regions with low humidity should pay more attention to COVID-19 outbreaks: evidence from the delta variant
© Yingyaipumi / stock.adobe.com The global COVID-19 pandemic and its huge social and economic impact have aroused great attention and created a huge public health challenge. How to effectively stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and return to a normal life has become our main concern. Non-pharmaceutical interventions can effectively stop the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, but…
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Racial Equity in the Fight Against COVID-19
COVID-19 is a deadly disease that has caused immense economic, political and social disruption throughout the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it has claimed a devastating death toll of over 1 million lives. The pandemic has also brought to light the systemic discrimination Black communities continue to face in Canada. For example,…
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Distortion of Science to Inhibit the Adoption of Infectious Disease Strategies.
Distortion of science for political and economic ends has prevented the allocation of needed resources to stop the spread of dangerous pathogens. This places all of society as a whole at risk, but exacting an insufferable toll of death and disability on our front-line healthcare workers, along with our most vulnerable populations. COVID-19 has demonstrated…
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Will the COVID-19 Pandemic Transform Health Care ?
Arundhati Roy observed: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew.” I however, have set my expectation lower for COVID-19, hoping that this pandemic will provide the motivation to make the changes we always knew needed to happen, but lacked the political will and motivation to implement them.…