Rebuilding Post-Pandemic Societies: Editorial Section

Author(s):  
Dadan Sumardani

INDONESIAN SCHOLARS SCIENTIFIC SUMMIT (I3S) 2021 & OISAA ASIA-OCEANIA SYMPOSIUM 2021 DefinitionIndonesian Scholars Scientific Summit (I3S) 2021 is a scientific conference involving Indonesian scholars who currently work or study in Taiwan and outside of Taiwan, such as Indonesia and other countries.  This event is conducted by Perhimpunan Pelajar Indonesia (PPI) Taiwan, which is the Overseas Indonesian Student’s Association Alliance in Taiwan, in collaboration with Perhimpunan Pelajar Indonesia Dunia Kawasan (PPIDK) Asia-Oceania or the Overseas Indonesian Student’s Association Alliance for Asia-Oceania Region, who have their annual symposium in 2021. These two associations are referred to as PPI Taiwan and OISAA Asia-Oceania, throughout this conference.  The joint event of I3S 2021 and the OISAA Asia-Oceania Symposium 2021 is scheduled to be conducted on June 21-27, 2021 and being hosted by PPI Taiwan. The main event is taking place on June 25-27, 2021 which is prompted by four days of pre-event series on June 21-23, 2021. BackgroundDated back on December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) received a notification of pneumonia disease, whose source was unidentified, in Wuhan, China. Then, the disease which was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus was referred by WHO as COVID-19. The COVID-19 was designated by WHO as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Furthermore, by January 29, 2021, as many as 102.6 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 2.2 million deaths have been reported by WHO. Globally, five countries experiencing the highest number of COVID-19 positive cases are the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and Great Britain. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused not only casualties but also opens up opportunities, among others are in the fields of technology, education and health. In the field of technology, we can observe the increasing use of technology for distance or remote education and the utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various fields including health. In the health sector, technology related to telemedicine and vaccines has also begun to develop. There has also been an expectation that within the post- COVID-19 period, the novel ideas keep developing, and Indonesia can take an active role in developing this. Regarding the aforementioned situation, the establishment of the 2021 Indonesian Scholar Scientific Summit (I3S 2021) is expected to serve as a scientific forum for exchanging ideas among scientists, students and industry practitioners in all relevant fields in order to generate innovative ideas that can be developed in the post-COVID-19 pandemic situation. Objectives To promote the development of scientific ideas from and among the participants and speakers. To disseminate new knowledge to the participants, committees, and speakers. To establish a network among the participants, committees, and speakers. To increase awareness on current issues related to the conference’s theme.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Consuelo Mayorga Contreras ◽  
Reina Cristina Jiménez Sánchez ◽  
Patricia Vázquez Alvarado ◽  
Sergio Muñoz Juárez ◽  
Jesús Carlos Ruvalcaba Ledezma ◽  
...  

Community participation is one of the main axes of health services where the community takes responsibility for its own health. The World Health Organization considers as a cornerstone of the health promotion and disease preventive actions. The population should be involved in activities aimed at improving their health needs, previously identified by them because if their point of view is not taken into account, efforts generated by the health sector to improve their health conditions would result unsuccessful. Participation is an empowerment tool that allows the community a more active role in decision taking to enforce their rights. Achieving more effective prevention of diseases is one of the objectives of participation. No matter the adjective used (social, community..) participation implies to involve and empower citizens because it is essential to identify and approach main health determinants; it is required that a legal support that endorses participation exists; therefore, the General Health Law emphasizes the right of the population to participate in disease prevention. Some groups of community participation in México are Health Committee and Mutual Aid Group (Spanish: Grupo de Ayuda Mutua). Despite it is in all discourses, participation has not been concentrated in social action yet.


2021 ◽  
pp. 97-118
Author(s):  
Don L. Goldenberg

Misinformation and disinformation, most often propagated on social media sites, became rampant during the pandemic, contributing to myths and conspiracy theories. Such falsehoods resulted in inappropriate treatments, such as happened with hydoxychloroquine, and has contributed to vaccine hesitancy. Disinformation and political interference in institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) caused confusion for the American public and contributed to the poor pandemic performance in the United States. Anti-vaccine disinformation has interfered with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Healthcare providers need to take an active role in combating medical misinformation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (22) ◽  
pp. 7051-7054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Elguero ◽  
Lucrèce M. Délicat-Loembet ◽  
Virginie Rougeron ◽  
Céline Arnathau ◽  
Benjamin Roche ◽  
...  

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder that poses a serious health threat in tropical Africa, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health priority. Its persistence in human populations has been attributed to the resistance it provides to Plasmodium falciparum malaria in its heterozygous state, called sickle cell trait (SCT). Because of migration, SCT is becoming common outside tropical countries: It is now the most important genetic disorder in France, affecting one birth for every 2,400, and one of the most common in the United States. We assess the strength of the association between SCT and malaria, using current data for both SCT and malaria infections. A total of 3,959 blood samples from 195 villages distributed over the entire Republic of Gabon were analyzed. Hemoglobin variants were identified by using HPLCy (HPLC). Infections by three species of Plasmodium were detected by PCR followed by sequencing of a 201-bp fragment of cytochrome b. An increase of 10% in P. falciparum malaria prevalence is associated with an increase by 4.3% of SCT carriers. An increase of 10 y of age is associated with an increase by 5.5% of SCT carriers. Sex is not associated with SCT. These strong associations show that malaria remains a selective factor in current human populations, despite the progress of medicine and the actions undertaken to fight this disease. Our results provide evidence that evolution is still present in humans, although this is sometimes questioned by scientific, political, or religious personalities.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-572

IN THE summary of the report of the Expert Committee on Prematurity of the World Health Organization, published in this column in February 1951, Dr. Ethel Dunham indicated the concern of the Expert Committee in regard to uniformity of information on the incidence and mortality of prematurity. The need for uniformity is particularly urgent in a field where there are so many intrinsic variable factors. It has been shown time and again that the ability of a premature infant to survive, under the best of care, is closely correlated with the birth weight, which in itself reflects the stage of maturity. In turn, the stage of maturity at a given weight is affected by sex, race, and whether the child is a single or one of a multiple birth. Uniformly, at a particular stage of maturity, male infants are larger than female, single births are larger than multiple births and, in the United States, white babies are larger than Negro babies. These considerations underline the danger of misinterpretation of so-called over-all rates for the incidence of prematurity and for the mortality of premature infants. For example, at any given weight, Negro premature infants are probably more mature and consequently have a better chance of surviving.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Joseph Meaney ◽  

COVID-19 vaccine passports run the risk of creating a divided society where social privileges or restrictions based on “fitness” lead to discrimination based on immunization status. Individuals have a strong right to be free of coercion to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and we should be very leery of further invasion of private medical decisions. These concerns are shared both internationally and in the United States, and the World Health Organization, the Biden administration, and many US governors oppose COVID-19 vaccine credentials. In addition, regulations for COVID-19 vaccine credentials face practical barriers, including lack of access globally, especially among the poor; and lack of scientific data on the efficacy of these vaccines.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Baker ◽  
Maripier Isabelle ◽  
Mark Stabile ◽  
Sara Allin

In most high-income countries, including Canada, the share of births by Caesarean section (C‑section) has risen over the past decades to far exceed World Health Organization recommendations of the proportion justified on medical grounds (15 percent). Although unnecessary C-sections represent an important cost for health care systems, they are not associated with clear benefits for the mother and the child and can sometimes represent additional risks. Drawing on administrative records of nearly four million births in Canada, as well as macro data from the United States and Australia, we provide a comprehensive account of rising C-section rates. We explicitly consider the contributions of the main factors brought forward in the policy literature, including changing characteristics of mothers, births, and physicians as well as changing financial incentives for C-section deliveries. These factors account for at most one-half of the increase in C-section rates. The majority of the remaining increase in C-sections over the period 1994–2011 occurred in the early 2000s. We suggest that some event or shock in the early 2000s is likely the primary determinant of the recent strong increase in the C-section rate in Canada.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kreps

BACKGROUND Misinformation about COVID-19 has presented challenges to public health authorities during pandemics. Understanding the prevalence and type of misinformation across contexts offers a way to understand the discourse around COVID-19 while informing potential countermeasures. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to study COVID-19 content on two prominent microblogging platform, Twitter, based in the United States, and Sina Weibo, based in China, and compare the content and relative prevalence of misinformation to better understand public discourse of public health issues across social media and cultural contexts. METHODS A total of 3,579,575 posts were scraped from both Weibo and Twitter, focusing on content from January 30th, 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” and February 6th, 2020. A 1% random sample of tweets that contained both the English keywords “coronavirus” and “covid-19” and the equivalent Chinese characters was extracted and analyzed based on changes in the frequencies of keywords and hashtags. Misinformation on each platform was compared by manually coding and comparing posts using the World Health Organization fact-check page to adjudicate accuracy of content. RESULTS Both platforms posted about the outbreak and transmission but posts on Sina Weibo were less likely to reference controversial topics such as the World Health Organization and death and more likely to cite themes of resisting, fighting, and cheering against the coronavirus. Misinformation constituted 1.1% of Twitter content and 0.3% of Weibo content. CONCLUSIONS Quantitative and qualitative analysis of content on both platforms points to cross-platform differences in public discourse surrounding the pandemic and informs potential countermeasures for online misinformation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-120
Author(s):  
Ayşe İKİNCİ KELEŞ ◽  
Gökhan KELEŞ

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which causes severe airway problems, first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The virus led to a pandemic that affected the entire world. COVID-19 affects not only health, but also economic and social life. The emergence of this pandemic has led to health systems across the world being questioned. The aim of this study was to assess the adequacy of world health systems in the face of this pandemic. Twelve countries were selected and analyzed in the study. The choice of these countries was determined by the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Information concerning health systems and COVID-19 was obtained from Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 2018, World Health Organization 2020 and Deep Knowledge Group data and was subjected to statistical analysis. According to the analysis, the country with the highest investment in health expenditures is the United States (10586 US dollars/capita), and Germany stands out as the best in health services. Another finding is the first and second wave of COVID-19 was identified as the USA with the highest case and death rate (First wave cases 1.942.363 and deaths 110.514; second wave cases at 7.419.230 and deaths 2.09.450). As a result of the meta-analysis, it is revealed that only socio-economic power is not enough, countries with good health systems are more successful in the pandemic. In addition, the analysis once again reveal how important health systems are in the face of such a pandemic.


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.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. e0241899
Author(s):  
Barbara Bortone ◽  
Charlotte Jackson ◽  
Yingfen Hsia ◽  
Julia Bielicki ◽  
Nicola Magrini ◽  
...  

Antibiotic fixed dose combinations (FDCs) can have clinical advantages such as improving effectiveness and adherence to therapy. However, high use of potentially inappropriate FDCs has been reported, with implications for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and toxicity. We used a pharmaceutical database, IQVIA-Multinational Integrated Data Analysis System (IQVIA-MIDAS®), to estimate sales of antibiotic FDCs from 75 countries in 2015. Antibiotic consumption was estimated using standard units (SU), defined by IQVIA as a single tablet, capsule, ampoule, vial or 5ml oral suspension. For each FDC antibiotic, the approval status was assessed by either registration with the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) or inclusion on the World Health Organization (WHO) Essential Medicines List (EML). A total of 119 antibiotic FDCs were identified, contributing 16.7 x 109 SU, equalling 22% of total antibiotic consumption in 2015. The most sold antibiotic FDCs were amoxicillin-clavulanic acid followed by trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and ampicillin/cloxacillin. The category with the highest consumption volume was aminopenicillin/β-lactamase inhibitor +/- other agents. The majority of antibiotic FDCs (92%; 110/119) were not approved by the US FDA. Of these, the most sold were ampicillin/cloxacillin, cefixime/ofloxacin and metronidazole/spiramycin. More than 80% (98/119) of FDC antibiotics were not compatible with the 2017 WHO EML. The countries with the highest numbers of FDC antibiotics were India (80/119), China (25/119) and Vietnam (19/119). There is high consumption of FDC antibiotics globally, particularly in middle-income countries. The majority of FDC antibiotic were not approved by either US FDA or WHO EML. International initiatives such as clear guidance from the WHO EML on which FDCs are not appropriate may help to regulate the manufacturing and sales of these antibiotics.


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