Are human rights really for everyone? The Covid-19 pandemic has raised questions about how we prioritise healthcare and why we accept gross inequalities. This podcast episode – the second in new series A Shot In The Dark – asks how we can address inequalities in our communities and around the world.
ABOUT
How can improving the social determinants of health aid the realisation of public health goals and ultimately lead to more equitable and just societies? In the second episode of this three-part podcast, A Shot In The Dark, host Belinda Rawson explores this theme in the context of Covid-19 vaccine prioritisation.
Dr Ruth Watkinson from the University of Manchester discusses how layers of risk have not taken into account the context of people’s lives, such as existing health inequality due to systemic racism or vulnerabilities stemming from low socio-economic status. We also hear from Dr Ferdinand C Mukumbang from the University of Washington on the experiences of some of the most at-risk populations, such as asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants, who have been largely excluded from Covid-19 discourse despite their increased level of vulnerability to the disease. In particular, we hear about the challenges that undocumented migrants face when navigating foreign health systems, as well as the inclusive Covid-19 vaccination approaches of some countries, as opposed to the exclusionary approaches of others.
Find the full story here, and listen on Soundcloud.
Podcast by Lacuna Magazine
Interviewer: Belinda Rawson
Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson
FURTHER READING
- Ethnic inequalities in health-related quality of life among older adults in England.
- Inequalities in ageing: health disadvantages amongst ethnic minority groups.
- Area-based vaccination would better protect against COVID-19.
- A year of COVID-19 in the North: Regional inequalities in health and economic outcomes.
- Unspoken inequality: how COVID-19 has exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented migrants in South Africa.
- Are asylum seekers, refugees and foreign migrants considered in the COVID-19 vaccine discourse?
- Pervasive systemic drivers underpin COVID-19 vulnerabilities in migrants.
- How the Covid-19 pandemic is shifting the migrant-inequality narrative.
Main image by Hakan Nural.