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Covid-19 pandemic: raising the stakes for a ‘local health’ perspective

By juliusmugwagwa, on 19 March 2020

By Dr Julius Mugwagwa, Lecturer in Innovation and Development at UCL STEaPP

For the last few years, I have been part of a group that has challenged the assumptions of ‘global health’ narratives. Together with colleagues Geoffrey Banda at the University of Edinburgh and Maureen Mackintosh at the Open University, we have drawn from our health sector research in Africa to argue that some of the key underlying assumptions of global health are fundamentally flawed. This includes the assumption that medical health technologies are readily available commodities; that utilisation and access can be generated in a timely manner from global pharmaceutical value chains; and that “global” advances in knowledge benefit all.

State Public Health Laboratory in Exton Tests for COVID-19

Courtesy of Governor Tom Wolf on Flickr

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