Covid 19 And The Right To Health In Africa

This collection draws upon a range of thematic and regional case studies and uses the right to health as a normative framework to explore the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Drawing lessons from across the continent, the book discusses the challenges faced by African states seeking to ensure the availability, accessibility, and quality of health care in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the volume explores the impact of the pandemic on the right to health of vulnerable and marginalized groups, such as women, children, elderly persons with disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, and people from disadvantaged communities. Due to the poor funding of the healthcare systems, access to health-related services was limited to these groups in many African countries, thereby leading to avoidable COVID-19-related deaths through shortages of vital supplies, including diagnostic tests, ventilators, and oxygen cylinders. Chapters in the volume also explore the contentious issues of vaccine mandates, equity, resource allocation, and the rights of healthcare providers during the pandemic. This collection will be of interest to students of public health, human rights, and the social sciences, as well as to academics and policymakers with an interest in the nexus between the COVID-19 pandemic and public health policy in Africa.

The book, Conformity of COVID-19 responses in Africa through the prism of international human rights law, provides useful insights into the subject-matter of COVID-19 from African perspectives on international law, human rights and democracy through detailed analyses of data, instruments, documents and events connected with the pandemic. The cutting-edge analyses by the contributors help to provide useful information on the human rights preparedness of African states to deal with pandemics, the limitations or restrictions imposed on human rights by African governments and the violations of human rights that took place during the pandemic; and whether the continent has learnt any useful lessons based on past experiences.

This book explores the resilience of constitutional government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, connecting and comparing perspectives from ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa to global trends. In emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a state has the right and duty under both international law and domestic constitutional law to take appropriate steps to protect the health and security of its population. Emergency regimes may allow for the suspension or limitation of normal constitutional government and even human rights. Those measures are not a license for authoritarian rule, but they must conform to legal standards of necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality that limit state action in ways appropriate to the maintenance of the rule of law in the context of a public health emergency. Bringing together established and emerging African scholars from ten countries, this book looks at the impact government emergency responses to the pandemic have on the functions of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, as well as the protection of human rights. It also considers whether and to what extent government emergency responses were consistent with international human rights law, in particular with the standards of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination in the Siracusa Principles.

This book makes a significant contribution by initiating debate on the state of human rights, freedoms and civil liberties in the context of emergencies such as pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It is without doubt that as the world was preoccupied with combating the Covid-19 pandemic, issues of rights, freedoms and liberties in the context of this struggle increasingly came under close scrutiny. In many African countries, there were concerns about Covid-19 containment measures being enforced brutally by state security operatives such as the army, the police and the intelligence officers. Considerable debate also arose on whether the infringements that took place in an effort to thwart the pandemic were justifiable on health and moral grounds. The book makes an important claim that the fight against Covid-19 was marred by the abuse of power by many ruling elites who weaponised and repurposed pandemic curtailment provisions to taper democratic space by solidifying autocracy through muzzling political opponents, gagging the press and instituting various socio-political control mechanisms beyond public health concerns. In addition, cases abound of Covid-19 containment protocols being instrumentalised to subvert electoral processes, scuttle popular protests and extinguish opposition political activity. Undoubtedly, this book illustrates that the global struggle against Covid-19 was also very much a war for the respect of basic freedoms, human rights and civil liberties, thereby highlighting the need to establish a sustainable interaction between pandemic dynamics and human rights. The book is for students and practitioners across fields, but most especially in history, law, political science, development studies, philosophy, social anthropology and sociology.

This critical research collection focuses on Eastern and Southern Africa providing timely and valuable insights and reflections around the changes and stabilities within media ecosystems caused by the novel Covid-19 crises.

In the last two decades, the rise of global health studies at universities across the world reflects the interest of a growing generation of students motivated to be involved in progressive global change. Grassroots advocacy for health equity and strong leadership in the global South have catalyzed a paradigm shift from primarily preventative health programs to holistic systems providing health care as a human right. To succeed in this field, students must not only understand the elements needed to deliver equitable health care but also the historical and social factors that cause and propagate health disparities. An Introduction to Global Health Delivery, Second Edition is an immersive introduction to global health's origins, actors, interventions, and challenges from the ongoing impacts of racism to the momentum for the delivery of care that began with the AIDS movement through to the current era of COVID-19. Informed by physician Joia Mukherjee's quarter-century of experience fighting disease and poverty in more than a dozen countries, it delivers a clear-eyed overview of the movement underway to address injustice, reduce global health disparities, and deliver health care as a human right. This second edition extends the lens of global health delivery to address the challenges of COVID-19 and the prevention of future pandemics. It features updated chapters exploring pandemics, preparedness, and the intersection of key social movements with the right to health care, including Black Lives Matter, decolonization, and climate justice. Enriched with case studies and exercises that encourage readers to think critically about equitable global health delivery, An Introduction to Global Health Delivery, Second Edition is the essential starting point for readers of any background seeking a practical grounding in global health's promise and progress.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Bringing together a range of experts across various sectors, this important volume explores some of the key issues that have arisen in the Global South with the COVID-19 pandemic. Situating the worldwide health crisis within broader processes of globalisation, the book investigates implications for development and gender, as well as the effects on migration, climate change and economic inequality. Contributors consider how widespread and long-lasting responses to the pandemic should be, while paying particular attention to the accentuated risks faced by vulnerable populations. Providing answers that will be essential to development practitioners and policy makers, the book offers vital insights into how the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socio-economic contexts worldwide.

"The global rise in pandemics, most recently COVID-19, and other health challenges, some of which are due to climate change, have imposed significant challenges on the healthcare systems in economies around the world. Thus, this book deals with an issue that is very timely and relevant, not just in Africa but globally. It critically assesses healthcare reforms in Ghana under the Fourth Republic, since 1993. Although it focuses on Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme of 2003, the book instructively goes beyond this program. The book argues that, although Ghana is a bellwether of healthcare reforms in Africa, its healthcare initiatives are still far from the service haven of healthcare as a human right. Themes that animate the book's argument include the need to translate human rights law, such as the right to health, into practical policies that work for ordinary citizens. Key highlights of the book include an increased accent on health as a human right, emphasis on comparative analysis in healthcare studies, and the formulation of a four-hallmark framework, embedded in economics, law, politics, and human rights, to act as a guide for assessment of healthcare reforms in Africa in particular, and Ghana more specifically. Using Ghana as a case study and analytical window into the world, the book offers a valuable and timely resource for academics, students and policymakers across the disciplines of development and healthcare economics, law, public policy, political science, sociology, and African and Caribbean studies, as well as in various fields in health science"--