Sept 2023
The Covid-19 pandemic intensified deep social inequalities in developing countries, revealed inadequate official responses, exposed the geopolitical inequities that separate rich and developing countries, and gave rise to heated debates about the state of health systems. The pandemic also highlighted the coexistence of long-standing precariousness, tensions, and resiliencies in health systems.
The supplement Covid-19 in Latin America: conflicts, resistances and inequalities was edited by Claudia Agostoni, Investigadora titular del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Karina Ramacciotti, Professor en la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Carlos Henrique Paiva, researcher at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz and Marcos Cueto, Scientific editor of HCS-Manguinhos.
Latin America was the epicenter of covid-19 for much of 2020 and 2021, both for the highest number of cases and highest fatality rate, as well as for hosting the highest percentage of infected people in relation to its population globally. The region was also the scene of extreme cases. These include the abandonment of the sick and corpses in the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the mass burials in Manaus, Brazil, in early 2020.
The purpose of the supplement Covid-19 in Latin America is to gather original and relevant studies that, based on Covid-19, establish a contextualized dialogue between the past and the present. The articles discuss how the complex relationship between science, society and politics is magnified in health disasters, record the challenges of health workers and claim the importance of a comparative historical perspective to analyze and understand epidemics and contemporary public health. They also present detailed reflections on the interactions between science, health and society in crisis situations, which will be of interest to historians and other social scientists who may wish to deepen their understanding and historical analysis of the pandemic in the future.
These works have an additional originality. They were carried out at the same time as the pandemic was developing and intensifying, a time when individual, collective and institutional reactions and responses were uncertain, divergent and contradictory. Thus, another element addressed by the articles is the multifaceted social and institutional perception of the new disease, reaffirming that the coronavirus disease is much more than a biomedical event.
Read the editor’s note of the supplement and the supplement itself(Volume: 30, Published: 2023)
