Hong Kong under COVID-19: Active self-mobilization, freedom and responsibilities, and learnings

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric King-man Chong
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Hong Kong Sar ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
Self Protection

Hong Kong society became the site of active self-mobilization when there was a virus outbreak in early 2020. Hong Kong residents quickly adopted voluntary protective measures such as minimizing social contacts and buying personal protective equipment. After the presence of a new Coronavirus was confirmed, medical and health care workers went on strike in early February, clamouring for the Hong Kong SAR government to close border crossings with China. They feared the medical and health care system would not be able to bear the rising numbers of infection. The government responded with a pronouncement that the strike was endangering lives, and that a complete closure of border checkpoints was unfeasible. Generally, Hong Kong residents exercised self-protection and self-restraint, voluntarily choosing to stay home except to go to work or buy daily necessities. As a result, Hong Kong did not adopt a citywide lockdown. More people began to leave their homes when infection rates slowed, but this led to further waves of infection. The Hong Kong experience raises a number of questions about society that are relevant to education and citizenship. What are individuals’ responsibilities during a pandemic? Does a state of pandemic make it acceptable to limit freedom of movement and freedom of expression, and if so, how can this principle be applied in relation to the right to strike for the purpose of compelling the government to take stronger public health measures? Specific to education, how can young people be taught to follow safety advice amid the temptation to go outdoors for exercise under restrictive measures? There is a need for engaging students in social compassion and dialogues to face a persistent pandemic.

Hong Kong under COVID-19: Active self-mobilization, freedom and responsibilities, and learnings

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric King-man Chong
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Hong Kong Sar ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
Self Protection

Hong Kong society became the site of active self-mobilization when there was a virus outbreak in early 2020. Hong Kong residents quickly adopted voluntary protective measures such as minimizing social contacts and buying personal protective equipment. After the presence of a new Coronavirus was confirmed, medical and health care workers went on strike in early February, clamouring for the Hong Kong SAR government to close border crossings with China. They feared the medical and health care system would not be able to bear the rising numbers of infection. The government responded with a pronouncement that the strike was endangering lives, and that a complete closure of border checkpoints was unfeasible. Generally, Hong Kong residents exercised self-protection and self-restraint, voluntarily choosing to stay home except to go to work or buy daily necessities. As a result, Hong Kong did not adopt a citywide lockdown. More people began to leave their homes when infection rates slowed, but this led to further waves of infection. The Hong Kong experience raises a number of questions about society that are relevant to education and citizenship. What are individuals’ responsibilities during a pandemic? Does a state of pandemic make it acceptable to limit freedom of movement and freedom of expression, and if so, how can this principle be applied in relation to the right to strike for the purpose of compelling the government to take stronger public health measures? Specific to education, how can young people be taught to follow safety advice amid the temptation to go outdoors for exercise under restrictive measures? There is a need for engaging students in social compassion and dialogues to face a persistent pandemic.

Covid-19 and its financial effects on the dental fraternity and health-care workers: A literature review

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 628-631
Author(s):  
Devangi Agrawal ◽  
Namisha Khara ◽  
Bhushan Mundada ◽  
Nitin Bhola ◽  
Rajiv Borle
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Dental Procedures ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Dental Practices ◽  
Precautionary Measures ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up

In the wake of the current outbreak of novel Covid-19, which is now declared as a 'pandemic' by the WHO, people around the globe have been dealing with a lot of difficulties. This virus had come into light in December 2019 and since then has only grown exponentially. Amongst the most affected are the ones who have been working extremely hard to eradicate it, which includes the hospitals, dental fraternity and the health-care workers. These people are financially burdened due to limited practise. In the case of dentistry, to avoid the spread of the virus, only emergency treatments are being approved, and the rest of the standard procedures have been put on hold. In some cases, as the number of covid cases is rising, many countries are even trying to eliminate the emergency dental procedures to divert the finances towards the treatment of covid suffering patients. What we need to realise is that this is probably not the last time that we are facing such a situation. Instead of going down, we should set up guidelines with appropriate precautionary measures together with the use of standardised PPEs. The government should also establish specific policies to support dental practices and other health-care providers. Together, we can fight this pandemic and come out stronger.

Telemedicine (or Teleconsultation?) Practice Guidelines of India: A Game changer or a half-hearted attempt amid COVID-19? (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venkatesh U ◽  
Aravind Gandhi P
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Practice Guidelines ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Data Security ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Government ◽  
First Time ◽  
Game Changer

UNSTRUCTURED Telemedicine is where health care intersects with Information Technology. In India, there has been no statutory regulations or official guidelines, specific for Telemedicine practice and allied matters, so far. For the first time, Government of India has released Telemedicine Practice Guidelines for Registered Medical Practitioners on March 25, 2020, amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Through this paper, we would like to initiate the discussion on the features of the guidelines, limitations, and its significance in times of COVID-19 pandemic. The guidelines are with a restricted scope for providing medical consultation to patients, excluding other aspects of Telemedicine such as research and evaluation, and the continuing education of health-care workers. The guidelines have elaborated on the eligibility for practicing Telemedicine in India, the modes and types of Teleconsultation, delved into doctor-patient relationship, consent, & management protocols, touched upon the data security & privacy aspects of the Teleconsultation. After releasing the guidelines, Telescreening of public for COVID-19 symptoms is being advocated by the Government of India. COVID-19 National Teleconsultation Centre (CoNTeC) has been initiated, which connects the doctors across the India to AIIMS in real-time for accessing expert guidance on treatment of the COVID-19 patients.

Sedition in Liberal Democracies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anushka Singh
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Indian Experience ◽  
Judicial Discourse ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right

Liberal democracies claim to give constitutional and legal protection of varying degrees to the right to free speech of which political speech and the right to dissent are extensions. Within the right to freedom of expression, however, some category of speeches do not enjoy protection as they are believed to be ‘injurious’ to society. One such unprotected form of political speech is sedition which is criminalized for the repercussions it may have on the authority of the government and the state. The cases registered in India in recent months under the law against sedition show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, a group of university students for their alleged ‘anti-national’ statements, anti-liquor activists, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracies. The work is done in a comparative framework keeping the Indian experience as its focus, bringing in inferences from England, USA, and Australia to intervene and contribute to the debates on the concept of sedition within liberal democracies at large. On the basis of an analytical enquiry into the judicial discourse around sedition, the text of the sedition laws, their political uses, their quotidian existence, and their entanglement with the counter-terror legislations, the book theorizes upon the life of the law within liberal democracies.

scholarly journals HONG KONG SAR IMMIGRATION IN THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICS, POLICY AND INSTITUTION

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Andry Indrady
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Power Domination ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hong Kong Sar ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Government ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
And Control

The Bureaucratic System of the Immigration Department of Hong Kong SAR is one of the legacies from British Colonial Government seen from legal and also immigration bureaucratic perspectives reflect the executive power domination over immigration policymaking. This is understandable since Hong Kong SAR adopts “Administrative State Model” which means Immigration Officer as a bureaucrat holds significant roles at both stages of policymaking and also its implementation. This research looks at transition period of the Immigration Department and its policies since the period of handover of Hong Kong SAR from the British Government to the Government of China especially throughout the concern from the public including academics about the future of immigration policies made by the Department that arguably from colonial to current being used as political and control tools to safeguard the interest of the Ruler. This situation ultimately will question the existence of Hong Kong SAR as one of the International Hub in the Era of Millennium.  

scholarly journals Gendered Articulations of Control and Care on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hungary

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katinka Linnamäki
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
System Of Care ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Unpaid Care ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Government

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Hungarian Fidesz-KDNP government´s discursive practices of control and care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper researches the Hungarian government’s communication on the official Hungarian COVID-19 Facebook page during the first wave of the pandemic. Its aim is to answer the question how the Hungarian government articulated control and care to reinforce sedimented gendered division of care work and institutions of control to tackle the potential disruption of the system of care before the widespread vaccination of the elderly population was available in the country. The paper argues that the pandemic has allowed the government to exert control in areas, such as the crisis in the workforce market and health care system, as well as in the destabilized system of care work. The main finding is that in the material the government performs control over care work, whose intensified discussion during the pandemic could lead to a potential disruption within the illiberal logic on two different levels. First, physical care work related to immediate physical needs, like hunger, clothing, pain enacted by female shoppers, female health care workers and female social workers, is newly defined during the pandemic as local, family-bound and a naturally female task. Second, the government articulates care work, either as potentially harmful (for the elderly population and thus indirectly to the government’s familialist politics), or as vulnerable and in need of protection from outside influences (portrayed through the interaction of health care workers and “hospital commanders”). This enables the government to perform full state control over care workers through the mobilization of police and military masculinity and to strengthen and re-naturalize the already existing hierarchies between traditional gender roles from a new perspective during the pandemic. This state of affairs highlights the vulnerability both of the elderly population, on whom its familialism builds, and of the system of informal care work, which builds on the unpaid care work of female citizens, who paradoxically are also articulated as potential harm for the elderly and for the system.

Human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed R.M. Elshobake
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Content Type ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Right

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the most prominent human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with international human rights law. Design/methodology/approach Through doctrinal and legal study and content analysis, this paper analyses the important relevant legal provisions under International human rights law and applies these provisions to the reality of managing the COVID-19 crisis to identify the most prominent human rights violations during the COVID-19 outbreak. This research paper considered as a review paper in that it provides a review of the most prominent measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis, which constitutes violations of international human rights law. Findings It is concluded that some measures that have been taken by countries to confront the COVID-19 pandemic have constituted violations of human rights and did not comply with the legal conditions to restrict human rights. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the ugly fractures in health-care systems, health inequities, racism and discrimination, Undermining the right to freedom of expression and the right to access information, gross negligence in protecting detainees from COVID-19 infection, all of these constitute clear violations of the principles of international human rights law. Research limitations/implications The spread of COVID-19 has not stopped, and its effects still continue, including human rights violations. Therefore, this paper cannot enumerate all human rights violations that occur during the spread of COVID-19. Practical implications Based on the results in this paper, governments need to be more prepared to face any health crisis at all levels including health care, which would reduce human rights violations. Social implications This research paper reflects positively on the social reality, as the adoption of its recommendations leads to the provision of adequate health care to all members of society in accordance with the principles of human rights, granting them the right to access information, protecting their right to freedom of expression, reducing the phenomenon of racism and discrimination and providing adequate health care to all detainees. Originality/value This paper studies an up-to-date topic that we are still living and seeing its effects. The benefit of this paper is to provide recommendations that protect human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals “The right time is just after birth”: acceptability of point-of-care birth testing in Eswatini: qualitative results from infant caregivers, health care workers, and policymakers

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Sacks ◽  
Philisiwe Khumalo ◽  
Bhekisisa Tsabedze ◽  
William Montgomery ◽  
Nobuhle Mthethwa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Point Of Care ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Birth Testing ◽  
The Right

Regional shortages in a small country: how to provide the right care in the right place?

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Hansen ◽  
R Batenburg ◽  
E Vis ◽  
L Van der Velden
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Hospital Care ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Regional Collaboration ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
More Care ◽  
The Right

Abstract Background The Netherlands, though being a relatively small and densely populated country, is faced with a similar challenge as other countries in terms of regional differences in access to care and attractiveness for care workers to build their careers. Both in primary care and hospital care new solutions are being sought which should help resolve these growing difficulties. Methods We conducted a literature review, survey and registry analysis, and held interviews with key stakeholders. Results Substantial differences exist between regions in the supply of both primary care and hospital care doctors. Particular and less populated regions appear to be hit in multiple ways, both with an extra ageing population requiring more care as well as by limited attractiveness for both primary care and hospital care workers. Solutions being used so far are mostly initiated by individual health care settings, such as strategic personnel management, redistribution of tasks and campaigns to increase the inflow of staff. Increasingly, solutions are also being explored at regional level, including a growing emphasis on regional collaboration, both in providing the right care in the right place as well as in terms of joint recruitment strategies. Still, such approaches only have a limited effect as a result of which new approaches are needed. Conclusions Strategies to improve the attractiveness of particular regions are now often fragmented, both between types of professions and sectors and different regions. In addition, innovative and new solutions appear to be hampered by vested interests of stakeholders. If new solutions are to be developed it is key that stakeholders are willing to compromise, be it when it comes to the autonomy of health care professionals and their associations and to the financial commitments required from government and insurer side.

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