This collection draws upon a range of thematic and regional case studies and uses the right to health as a normative framework to explore the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.
This collection draws upon a range of thematic and regional case studies and uses the right to health as a normative framework to explore the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.
Drawing lessons from across the continent, the book discusses the challenges faced by African states seeking to ensure the availability, accessibility and quality of healthcare in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the volume explores the impact of the pandemic on right to health of vulnerable and marginalised groups, such as women, children, elderly persons with disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, and people from disadvantaged communities. Due to the poor funding of the health care systems, access to health-related services was limited to these groups in many African countries, thereby leading to avoidable COVID-19-related deaths through shortages of vital supplies, including diagnostic tests, ventilators, and oxygen. Chapters in the volume also explore the contentious issues of vaccine mandates, equity, resource allocation and the rights of healthcare providers during the pandemic.
This collection will be of interest to students of public health, human rights, and the social sciences as well as academics and policymakers with an interest in the nexus between the COVID-19 pandemic and public health policy in Africa.
Part I: Conceptual Issues
1. Introduction
2. Discriminatory practices
against women in access to health care in Kenya in the context of COVID-19
pandemic
3. The indivisibility and interdependence of human rights in the
context of COVID-19 Part II: The Impact of COVID-19 on Access to Health Goods
and Services
4. The situation of COVID-19 vaccines inequity in developing
countries
5. COVID-19 vaccine mandate and the right to health in Africa:
Should Africa toe the path of the United States?
6. An intersectional
perspective of inequalities in access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa: The
case of migrants
7. A human rights approach to budgetary allocation and the
right to health: COVID-19 and health systems in Africa Part III: The Impact
of COVID-19 on the Right to Health of Disadvantaged and Marginalised Groups
8. Tale of two pandemics; Interrogating the impact of COVID-19 on access to
maternal health care rights for rural women in Kenya and Uganda
9. The impact
of COVID 19 on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women in
Eswatini
10. Protection of the right to health of minorities and vulnerable
groups during the COVID-19 pandemic
11. The nexus between COVID-19 and sexual
and reproductive health of adolescents: Bringing adolescents home
12. The
impact of COVID-19 on health care providers in Africa
13. Impact of COVID-19
to enjoyment of rights to abortion care and the role of transparency
14. The
role of regional human rights bodies and national courts in addressing human
rights in the context of COVID-19 pandemic
Ebenezer Durojaye is a professor of law at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. His areas of research include human rights, socio-economic rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender, and constitutionalism. He is the editor of Litigating the Right to Health in Africa: Challenges and Prospects (Routledge 2015) and co-editor of International Law and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: Lessons from Africa and Beyond (Routledge 2022), Constitutional Resilience and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa (2022), and Sexual Harassment, Law and Human Rights in Africa (2023).
Roopanand Mahadew is an associate professor of law at the Department of Law, University of Mauritius, Mauritius. His research and teaching explore international human rights law, public international law, and legal research methodology. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.
