MMI Geneva office,  28 May 2020 |  We today closed this special collection of Covid-19 related analysis and reporting and will  return to publishing members’ news (Covid19 related or others) as individual news item on the MMI website. Members of the Medicus Mundi international Network are kindly invited to directly share their news, reports, calls and announcements via MMI-cooperate mailing list. Thanks to Vittorio Giorgetti for having taken the lead in collecting and publishing an impressive synopsis of sound analysis, dedication, engagement. This is MMI Network at its best!

Covid-19 and national/global health challenges

The outbreak of the “Coronavirus” (Covid-19) all around the world is not only feeding headlines and news. It influences very concretely the lives of many of us. But it also raises questions on health systems, health policies, access to health, health governance or international cooperation, such as:

  • Are national healthcare systems prepared to deal with the epidemic or potential pandemic?  Or are some already weak and underfunded health systems (in Europe and elsewhere…) collapsing, leaving people suffering from this and other diseases on their own?
  • Are national public health authorities reacting adequately? And is international coordination working?
  • What about international solidarity and aid in times of a global pandemic?
  • Is the World Health Organiization equipped to properly handle this health emergency?
  • What about the health workers? What about access to medicines and vaccines? What about health security vs. human rights? What about all other neglected diseases that are now even more neglected, with all attention on the epidemic? What about….

For the members of the MMI Network and for the Network as a whole, such questions are not at all new ones, but have been at the focus or our attention and work over many years, mostly in the context of “poor countries in the Global South”, but more and more as a challenging reality in all countries and societies We have been critically reflecting on access to health care, strong public health systems, global health governance, the role of the WHO, the contributions of aid to strengthening or weakening health systems, and more.

Sometimes when a “big thing” such as the Coronavirus outbreak happens “right now” and “right here”, this can help us to see some essentials more clearly, but it might also block or distort our view, and what is to be done… It is for this reason that we have decided to open on our website this page with Network members’ insights and assessments related to the coronavirus outbreak.

We invited Network members to use this space for sharing their publications – see below – and we complemented this collection of already published reports, blogs and papers with some new input. Network members were updated about new contributions in a weekly “Covid-19 digest” that was sent out via “MMI cooperate” mailing list.

Vittorio Giorgetti, MMI Geneva Office
Thomas Schwarz, MMI Executive Secretary

Action Medeor

African Christian Health Associations Platform

Community Working Group on Health, Zimbabwe

Cordaid

Doctors with Africa CUAMM

Emergenza Sorrisi

Escuela Andaluza de Salud Publica

Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network

Health Poverty Action

IHP (International Health Policies) \ ITM (Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp)

*Subscribe to the IHP newsletter for weekly digest of the most relevant papers and reports

medico international

Medicus Mundi Italia

Medicus Mundi Spain

Medicus Mundi Switzerland

  • Corona and the International Cooperation
    Collection of articles, reports, guidelines and statements published by MMS, MMS members and friends, daily updated (in various languages). Main topics: Covid-19 in the global south; Covid-19 effects on global health; The work of Swiss international health cooperation

Memisa

Plan:g

Redemptoris Missio

Wemos

MMI Network members: see the overview here

Selection of photos:
MMI Network members