Whilst evidence continues to reveal the inadequacy of the response to Coronavirus across much of Europe and North America (from the lack of PPE, ICU and ventilators, to poor community strategies for contact-tracing), many countries in the Global South have shown remarkable levels of preparedness, no doubt a legacy of past epidemics that have left their mark in the collective memory of the region. However, this outbreak, as every emerging new disease, presents many unknowns and the Global South needs a body of knowledge on various aspects of the pandemic to advice policy makers on best practice in the short as well as in the long term. Our last session asked how development researchers and funders (mostly from the North) could and should respond to the challenges posed by the outbreak in LMIC in ways that pay attention to and reverse ingrained power hierarchies in international development research. In this session, we want to further turn the tables by assembling a panel of Global South researchers to discuss the present successes and challenges in their countries’ response to the outbreak and predict the contours of development research in the post-Covid era. We also explore the panel’s views on how “reverse innovation” can help the North build preparedness by strengthening health and research systems.
The session will focus on the following questions:What are the strengths and weaknesses in the way local research systems are responding to the pandemic?
How might the R4D agenda change after Covid-19 both at home and abroad? What needs to happen to ensure that local research systems are strong and prepared to respond to future outbreaks?
How have the lessons of past epidemics/humanitarian emergencies have helped shape the current response and what lessons can the region offer to a West struggling to come to grips with the enormity of a crisis for which it was largely unprepared?
See globalresearch.web.ox.ac.uk/r4d-series for Microsoft Teams meeting link
