Webinars

A follow up Webinar on 1^st July 2025, further examined the failure of health professional organisations to take a stand on the injustice of what is happening in Gaza. Speakers from Australia, South Africa and Israel (Physicians for Human Rights-Israel) shared their experiences of working to persuade the leadership of own professional organisations in the health sector to speak out on the destruction of health care in Gaza by Israeli forces, the use of starvation against civilian populations and the deaths and maiming of thousands of men, women and children in violation of humanitarian law. Speakers shared their ideas about what might work in different contexts to end the annihilation unfolding in Gaza. One of the speakers was a co-author on a letter to Lancet a few days prior to the Webinar on the moral and ethical failures of medical institutions to take action on the genocide in Gaza.

On 19th May 2025, the Division of Public Health Medicine helped organise a Webinar which focused on the failure of health professional organisations to take a stand on the injustice of what is happening in Gaza. Speaker shared their experiences of working to persuade the leadership of their own professional organisations to speak out on the destruction of health care in Gaza by Israeli forces, the use of starvation against civilian populations and the deaths and maiming of thousands of men, women and children in violation of humanitarian law. Speakers shared their ideas about what might work in different contexts to end the annihilation unfolding in Gaza. The Lancet picked up on this Webinar it its May 24th editorial titled “Gaza has been failed by silence and impunity."

In February 2024, academics from the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins University published a report on projected deaths in Gaza likely result from the Israeli invasion. Dr Zeina Jamalludine, from the LSTHM, presented these findings in a Webinar on the 12th March 2024 co-hosted by the Division of Public Health Medicine. Researchers estimated then that, without a ceasefire, between 58 000 and 74 000 deaths would occur from traumatic injuries and infectious disease due to both direct impacts of military attacks and from war-related disruption of basic services. This report has been subsequently updated in June 2024.

Dr Yipeng Ge is a Canadian family medicine practitioner trained in public health who was victimised by his residency training programme and the medical authorities for challenging anti-Palestinian racism. He shared his experiences in a Webinar on the 27th February of working tirelessly to combat social inequalities and to advance anti-racism work in health professional education and practice.

Dr Emma Keelan is a Respiratory Physician working in Ireland with experience of volunteering as a medical doctor in the Occupies Palestinian Terrirtories. On 21st February, she spoke at a Seminar on "Necropolitics and medical apartheid: the case of Palestine.”

Community Participation is a core element of the Primary Health Care approach and is also recognised in our South African Constitution as both a right and a requirement that is instrumental to the realisation of other rights. In the South African health system, legislation is in place, albeit imperfect and albeit poorly implemented, to promote community participation in public sector health services. However, with the forthcoming National Health Insurance, health services are likely to be delivered by a range of providers across both public and private sectors, a situation called a ‘plural health system.’ This project, a collaboration with researchers in Brazil and India, seeks to explore how community participation can be effectively integrated when a plural health system include both public and private providers, as will be the case under an NHI in South Africa. The project was launched in March 2023 and will run through to September 2026.

Evidence-based health policy requires ethical oversight that precludes Conflict of Interest undermining the integrity of scientific research. This is particularly important when private entities fund health research in which they have interest. Because few ethical guidelines provide practical tools for managing of interest, this project developed a toolkit and online course to strengthen the capacity of Research Ethics Committees and Science Granting Council to manage conflict of interest more effectively. This project, in collaboration with colleagues in Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa, was launched in August 2021. The toolkit and online course are available with open access.