When pandemics strike, world leaders and health responders must adapt quickly to the looming threat. Often the last factor they consider – if it makes their to-do lists at all – is gender. As advocates for the health and rights of girls and women, we’ve heard the excuses time and time again: “Gender isn’t a priority right now,” leaders say. “Maybe when things calm down,” they claim. “It’s not the right time,” they insist.

Before the emergence late last year of the novel coronavirus, which has now killed more than 100,000 people, the 21st century's epidemics had been far less deadly than the pandemics of the previous century.Here are the major epidemics of the last two centuries, starting with the most recent:Ebola: 2013-2016 And 2018-To DateThe deadliest epidemic of the haemorrhagic fever Ebola broke out in West Africa in December 2013 and lasted more than two years, killing more than 11,300 people, mainl

This week, leaders from medicine, economics, politics, and civil society are uniting to demand immediate and coordinated international action – in the next few days – to mobilise the resources needed to address the COVID-19 crisis, prevent the current health catastrophe from becoming one of the worst in history, and avert a global depression.

Thailand discovered its first COVID-19 case on 13 January, 2020, a 61-year-old woman from the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, China. Nearly a month after that, the Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok announced that they had observed success in treating severe cases of COVID-19 using a combination of drugs that are normally used in the treatment for influenza and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Initial results showed vast improvement in patients 48 hours after receiving the treatment.

Jamie Chui has been a virtual prisoner in her Hong Kong home for most of her nine-month pregnancy.Trapped initially by violent pro-democracy protests and tear gas, and then by the coronavirus – she now faces giving birth alone, with her husband unlikely to see his child until days later.Asia is facing a second wave of COVID-19 infections and as cases spiral globally with one million confirmed positive and half the planet on lockdown, women are having to give birth in unprecedented circumstanc

Italy has logged a shocking spike in its already staggering coronavirus death toll, with officials warning the peak of the crisis was still days away, as the global infection rate surges relentlessly upwards.With more than 300,000 people infected in Europe alone, the disease shows few signs of slowing, and has already cast the world into a recession, economists say.In the United States (US), which now has more than 104,000 COVID-19 patients, President Donald Trump invoked wartime powers Frida

"Test, test, test". The World Health Organisation's (WHO) prescription for success in wrestling the new coronavirus pandemic under control may seem simple.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) believes China's battle with the coronavirus offers a beacon of hope, but others question whether Beijing's strategy can be followed by other countries – particularly Western democracies.China has reported only one new local infection over the past four days, a seemingly remarkable turnaround given the chaos that surrounded the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan.While some experts caution against accepting Beijing's figures at

Of all the challenges that humans have faced over millennia, disease has always been a particularly brutal and resourceful enemy.The impact of disease has shaped history. Amerindians were ravaged by illnesses that the Spanish conquistadors brought to Mexico and South America; the “stout Cortez” of John Keats’s poem was accompanied by killer diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus.

I was recently walking along East 29th Street in Manhattan, after visiting a friend at Bellevue Hospital, when I was roused from my thoughts by a middle-aged white male screaming at an old Chinese man, “Get the f**k out of my country, you piece of Chinese s**t!” The old man was stunned. So was I, before I bellowed back (deploying the full range of my native Australian vocabulary), “F**k off and leave him alone, you white racist piece of s**t!” The pedestrian traffic stopped.