Hyderabad, November 17th 2020: The Edinburgh Futures Institute & Global Health Academy, a medical education arm of the prestigious, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, one of the top universities in the world, is collaborating with different stakeholders like public health experts, NGOs & medical fraternity in low- and medium-income countries to understand the inequities in dealing with the pandemic.
In one such collaboration, the Edinburgh Global Health Academy had collaborated with Hyderabad based NGO, Helping Hand Foundation.
The academy educators conducted tutorials for the undergraduate medical students from the live discussions through the video feeds on the health inequities encountered during the pandemic in some of the low-income countries.
The video recordings of the online discussions with HHF were very well received by the undergraduate students at Edinburgh University who are completing a course on Global Challenges said Dr. Jenny Reid, Course lead & coordinator at Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Global Health Academy, University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Reid, added that the University is collaborated with Royal college of Physicians, Edinburgh, Public Health experts in SE Asian Countries like Singapore & an NGO in Hyderabad, India to put together the module that will help the Undergraduate students get a broad understanding on the inequalities in the COVID pandemic, that will help them make informed choices about the future needs in public health policy in tackling the COVID Pandemic.
The students came up with lots of ideas in response to the tutorials. We asked them to think what they would include on a poster to educate people who may be illiterate about coronavirus and to try and reduce the stigma around the virus said Professor Liz Grant, Head of Global Head Academy, Edinburgh University.
Health Inequities
The focus of the narrative was to help the under-grad students at the University understand the health care system in India and what kind of situations emerged in the pandemic that resulted in economic & health inequities particularly for the vulnerable sections.
Some of the key areas of that where touched upon were - the lack of preparedness of the health system in ramping up testing & treatment capacities early, supply side shortages of essential medical equipment, the lack of trust factor in the public health system coupled with the push toward private health care that exploited the situation, the role of public health organisations in educating masses and helping fight stigma & fear - where some of the key points that went into the video feed that will be part of the tutorial for the under grad program on Global Challenges module. The challenges of addressing lack of isolation in Urban slums on account of large families & congested living within these clusters was also part of the panel discussion.
What was of interest to the medical educators at Edinburgh was the medical relief services like Home Isolation care which the NGO provided to over 5000 patients and delivered seamless online consultations by a competent team of doctors & took some of the health services to the door step like provisioning O2 supplies, labs and medicines said Mr. Mujtaba Hasan Askari of Helping Hand Foundation.
