scholarly journals The Covid-19 Epidemic in Serbia – the Challenges of Finding an Appropriate Basis for Responding to a Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofija Nikolić Popadić ◽  
Marko Milenković ◽  
Marta Sjeničić

Abstract The World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic on 11 March, 2020. Serbia declared a State of Emergency (SoE) on 15 March, just days after the country’s first official case, part of an unprecedented global wave of emergency responses, with states reacting differently to the threat of the virus. Decision makers in Serbia opted to declare a SoE, followed by a series of governmental decrees and ministerial orders. This paper examines the Serbian government’s initial response. The legislation in force in March 2020 is analysed to explore what possibilities and instruments could have been used, with particular focus on legislation regarding infectious diseases and disaster responses, which allowed for the declaration of an emergency situation, and the introduction of legitimate restrictions to fight the outbreak. The paper concludes that the full potential of all available measures and instruments was not exhausted, especially regarding legislation relating to an emergency situation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nafisa Qibriya Khan ◽  
A. H. Farooqui ◽  
Syed Ayesha Fatima ◽  
Jalil Ahmad ◽  
Tausif S. Khan

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic disease of modern time with unique and rapid transmission rate and affected almost all the nations without respecting any border. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is arguably the biggest health crisis the world has faced in 21st century. It is an infectious disease and declared pandemic by the World Health Organization. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, has now spread to 192 countries and administrative regions infecting nearly 800,000 individuals of all ages as of 31 March 2020. Though most infected individuals exhibit mild symptoms including fever, upper respiratory tract symptoms, shortness of breath, and diarrhoea, or are asymptomatic altogether, severe cases of infection can lead to pneumonia, multiple organ failure, and death. Globally, at least 7900 deaths have been directly attributed to COVID19, and this number is expected to rise with the ongoing epidemic. This is particularly crucial as the current outbreak involves a new pathogen (SARS-CoV-2), on which limited knowledge exists of its infectivity and clinical profile. Research is in progress on therapeutic efficacy of various agents including anti-malarials (Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine), antiviral drugs, and convalescent serum of recovered patients. Unani system of medicine is one of the traditional systems of medicine which is being explored for providing preventive, supportive and rehabilitative care to patients. Unani system of medicine has a detailed description of drugs that are utilized in many infectious diseases, including respiratory infections. Immune response is essential to eliminate virus and to preclude disease progression to severe stages. Therefore, it is important to summarize the evidence regarding the preventive measures, control options such as immune-stimulator and prophylactic treatment in Unani medicine against Covid19. This review summarizes various pharmacological actions of Unani formulation Tiryaq-e-Arba in Unani literature and various reported pharmacological activities which can possibly provide prevention, control and reduction of complications of this deadly disease.


2020 ◽  

In the past 100 years, the world has faced four distinctly different pandemics: the Spanish flu of 1918-1919, the SARS pandemic of 2003, the H1N1 or “swine flu” pandemic of 2012, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Each public health crisis exposed specific systemic shortfalls and provided public health lessons for future events. The Spanish flu revealed a nursing shortage and led to a great appreciation of nursing as a profession. SARS showed the importance of having frontline clinicians be able to work with regulators and those producing guidelines. H1N1 raised questions about the nature of a global organization such as the World Health Organization in terms of the benefits and potential disadvantages of leading the fight against a long-term global public health threat. In the era of COVID-19, it seems apparent that we are learning about both the blessing and curse of social media.


Author(s):  
Ken Hyland ◽  
Feng (Kevin) Jiang

Abstract Covid-19, the greatest global health crisis for a century, brought a new immediacy and urgency to international bio-medical research. The pandemic generated intense competition to produce a vaccine and contain the virus, creating what the World Health Organization referred to as an ‘infodemic’ of published output. In this frantic atmosphere, researchers were keen to get their research noticed. In this paper, we explore whether this enthusiasm influenced the rhetorical presentation of research and encouraged scientists to “sell” their studies. Examining a corpus of the most highly cited SCI articles on the virus published in the first seven months of 2020, we explore authors’ use of hyperbolic and promotional language to boost aspects of their research. Our results show a significant increase in hype to stress certainty, contribution, novelty and potential, especially regarding research methods, outcomes and primacy. Our study sheds light on scientific persuasion at a time of intense social anxiety.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Mirza Ghulamudin Ghulamudin ◽  
Maufur ◽  
Beni Habibi

Covid-19 has now attacked Indonesia, where the spread of the disease is very fast. Not only in Indonesia, but all corners of the world are currently experiencing a health crisis. In the beginning, the spread of Covid-19 had an impact on economic activity which began to sluggish. This also has an impact on the education system in Indonesia. Until several countries decided to close schools and universities. In an effort to prevent the spread of covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends temporarily stopping activities that would potentially cause crowds. Even during the outbreak, covid-19 in Indonesia, there were many ways that the government did to prevent its spread through social distancing. Kemendikbud instructed through the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) Directorate of Higher Education Circular No. 1 of 2020 concerning the prevention of the spread of covid-19 in the world of Education to organize distance learning and advise students to learn from their homes. Teachers and students are starting to be required to follow the current situation by using technology as a distance learning medium. One of the media that is being favored by teachers as a learning medium is the Google Classroom application. This application is an application that can make it easier for students and teachers to create effective learning. Given that students today are a generation who are very familiar with the use of technology. The use of technology in learning is an alternative method used by teachers during the Covid-19 Pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Vilbert

The COVID-19 has renovated the debate about global health governance. A number of scholars have proposed that the World Health Organization should assume the position of a central coordinator with hierarchical powers, demanding nation-states to “share their sovereignty”. This article presents four main objections to this project. First, when international institutions receive leverage, they use to impose “one-size-fits-all” policies, which conflicts with the characteristic heterogeny across countries. Second, geopolitical questions and the distribution of power in multilateral institutions put developing countries in a position of vulnerability within a hierarchical order. Third, the risk of crowding out parallel initiatives, especially from non-state actors. Fourth, decisions about health can have a major impact on countries, which may thwart the internal democratic principle. A Pareto improvement would be possible by strengthening the WHO’s operational capacity and its ability to issue technical guidance and coordinate with countries. To test this hypothesis, this study analyses the possible influence of the WHO’s guidance in the first year of the coronavirus health crisis, from January 2020 to January 2021, in 37 countries reported in the World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2020). The OLS regression performed shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the trust in the WHO, assumed as a proxy for the level of the organization's penetration, and the number of cases of COVID-19 (per million people) in the countries of the sample. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that there is a valid case for the countries to strengthen the WHO’s mandate post-COVID-19, but they should enhance the operations of provision of reliable information and support. Nation-states, in particular the developing ones, should eschew the temptation to create a hierarchical global health structure, which may not only fail due to countries’ asymmetries but is likely to create losers in the process.


Author(s):  
Linda Pring ◽  
Valerie Tadić

Ground-breaking progress in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders has allowed us far more insight into blindness and visual impairment (VI). The field of cognitive neuroscience has now established itself solidly in the literature, combining the knowledge from cognitive psychology, clinical studies related to brain damage, and neuroscience to open the way to significant advances in understanding. In recent years, the optimism engendered from the adult studies has played a large part in providing the impetus for developmental studies and in particular developmental neuroscience (Johnson 2005; Tager-Flusberg 1999). It is from this developmental neuroscience perspective that we can begin to understand the cognitive and behavioral manifestations associated with blindness and VI; albeit with the proviso that children with VI present particularly heterogeneous developmental patterns when compared to typically developing children (Fraiberg 1971). In considering the effects of blindness and VI, this chapter will focus on social understanding, language, cognition, and motor development. However, it begins with brief introductions to epidemiology and the effects of blindness on the functional and structural organization of the brain, which it is hoped will provide a useful context in which to consider the development of children who cannot see. Today the number of blind people in the world stands at 45 million, even though up to 75% of blindness could be avoided either by treatment or by prevention. The number of people with avoidable blindness will have doubled from 1990 to 2020 unless there is rapid and effective intervention, and the total number of the blind is projected to be as many as 76 million by 2020. To prevent this scenario, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) have jointly initiated Vision 2020, a project that aims to eliminate the main causes of avoidable blindness by the year 2020, with the ultimate long-term goal of a world in which all avoidable blindness is eliminated and in which everyone with unavoidable vision loss reaches their full potential. The top priority of Vision 2020 is the prevention of childhood blindness. At present there are 1.4 million children under the age of 15 who are blind.


Author(s):  
Elena Fernández-Díaz ◽  
Patricia P. Iglesias-Sánchez ◽  
Carmen Jambrino-Maldonado

Health crisis situations generate greater attention and dependence on reliable and truthful information from citizens, especially from those organisations that represent authority on the subject, such as the World Health Organization (WHO). In times of global pandemics such as COVID-19, the WHO message “health for all” takes on great communicative importance, especially from the point of view of the prevention of the disease and recommendations for action. Therefore, any communication must be understandable and accessible by all types of people, regardless of their technology, language, culture or disability (physical or mental), according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), taking on special relevance for public health content. This study analysed whether the WHO is accessible in its digital version for all groups of citizens according to the widely accepted standards in the field of the Internet. The conclusion reached was that not all the information is accessible in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, which implies that there are groups that are, to some extent, left out, especially affecting the elderly. This study can contribute to the development of proposals and suggest ways in which to improve the accessibility of health content to groups especially vulnerable in this pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (s1) ◽  
pp. s115-s115
Author(s):  
Madelina Ariani ◽  
Bella Donna

Introduction:The effort of medical and health services distribution requires data. However, the data and information were ignored in an emergency situation. For improving the distribution of data and information, the Center of Health Policy and Management, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) developed forms based on Health Crisis Response Guideline by Ministry of Health 2016 and the World Health Organization (WHO).Aim:Describing the implementation and development of forms based on Lombok and Central Sulawesi earthquake in 2018 for health cluster.Methods:The form contains (1) a volunteer registration form; (2) a monitoring potential outbreak disease form; (3) health problem in health cluster daily report form; (4) a chronological situation form. This will be implemented in health policymaking by the Sulawesi district health office (DHO) and will be regularly analyzed in every week.Results:North Lombok DHO, Central Sulawesi health office, and volunteers accepted these forms well. Periodically volunteers had reported their activity to DHO. All these reports contain many health indicators including environmental health. Reproductive health and health promotion. Implementation of this form in the other type of disaster in Indonesia is suggested.Discussion:First, these forms are important to attach to the guideline of health crisis response in order to be accessed by all DHO. Second, all forms are printed documents. It needs to develop into data input and analysis applications.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-63
Author(s):  
Lisa Forbes

The World Health Organization has designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. Lisa Forbes asks if the full potential of nursing as a profession has yet to be realised outside the traditional health environment


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadja Meisterhans

Blaming the World Health Organization (who) for its failures in the Ebola crisis was a common reaction of the media. However, exclusively denouncing the who for the spread of Ebola falls short as it does not recognize the structural deficits of those recent governance procedures financing global health that lead to a chronic underfunding of the who. Against this background, the article reflects perspectives of a democratic reform of global health funding. It concludes that only the who can provide a leadership on global health matters, but to do so it depends on states willing to rebuild the who’s capacities to act. To address the global health crisis properly, the revitalization of who’s constitutional mandate is critically necessary. The discussion is based on normative legal theory, which argues that processes of globalization have transformed international law into a global rule of law, placing specific duties on states and international institutions.


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