The constantly changing COVID-19 rules can be frustrating. But this pandemic is like no other public health crisis in history. It is better to think of the virus and US responses the way we think about hurricanes.
How we design our cities can make it harder to be healthy. City planners are now able to quantify the different elements that are affecting our health and well-being.
The deaths of huge numbers of the elderly in our care homes due to COVID-19 made clear the need to integrate our health and social care services. Here’s what needs to be done.
A young girl receives a COVID-19 vaccine during the second day of vaccination for children aged five to 11 years old in Montréal in November 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
Singapore will start charging people who choose not to be vaccinated for any COVID-related hospital care. While Australia’s hospitals are also under pressure, we shouldn’t follow suit.
Compared to ten similar countries, Australia does well on equity and health care outcomes. But it still has a way to go on access and how well the health system fits together.
To get to stage C of the plan out of COVID, 80% of adults over 16 need to be vaccinated. But that equates to just under 65% of all Australians – too low to safely open international borders.
If we open up the international borders before enough of the population is vaccinated, hospitals could become overwhelmed and deaths would be unacceptably high.
Both sex and gender analysis are crucial to health research to enable access to appropriate health information, diagnoses and care for gender-diverse populations.
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Sex is not gender but research continues to treat these as the same concept, with potentially damaging consequences for health studies, health policies and health programs.
Medical breakthroughs like the COVID-19 vaccines need to be matched with programs that tackle health inequality.
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With enough vaccine supplies coming online from October, the government has no excuse not to have all arrangements in place for an efficient vaccination program. Here’s what needs to change.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne