The Peruvian COVID-19 vaccine scandal and re-thinking the path to public trust.

In February 2021, the Peruvian 'vaccinegate' scandal broke when the media reported that nearly 500 experimental doses of an ongoing COVID-19 trial were given to key individuals not enrolled in the trial. Indeed, vaccine doses were administered to leading politicians, such as the former President and his wife, and other high-level health officials and academic leaders at the universities overseeing ethical compliance and administration of the trial. The 'vaccinegate' scandal in Peru is but one example of how the lack of a coordinated global response to COVID-19 has allowed countries to act in the best interest of some, ultimately, failing to secure a democratic approach to the right to health for all during a global pandemic. While Peruvian vaccinegate is an example of the egregious use of power to further cronyism amid fear and mounting COVID-19 related death, unfortunately, it is not an anomaly. We argue that the sensationalisation of the event has distracted from the existing precarious health system in Peru and the ways in which long-existing abuses of power evident prior to the pandemic limit a just response to it.

COVID-19 violence and the structural determinants of death: Canada's seasonal agricultural worker programme.

The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) is a managed migration programme that aims to fill labour shortages in Canada's agricultural industry with Black and Brown workers from the global South. For decades, migrant workers, scholars, and advocate groups have called for fundamental changes to address power imbalances produced by the design of the SAWP. The continued operation of the SAWP during the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the underlying structural violence that migrant labourers experience. Analysing the SAWP as a case study in how globalised labour processes dehumanise and make workers disposable, we argue that it is one component in a web of social and structural factors rooted in colonialism and racial capitalism, constituting the structural determinants of death. Whereas the structural determinants of health point to health 'inequities' and 'disparities', we advance the concept of structural determinants of death to politicise the numerous and multidimensional forms of violence embedded within state policy and to shed light on their beneficiaries. In doing so, we detail how policies can diminish the agency necessary to avoid death in deadly conditions and, specifically, draw attention to the preventable suffering and death perpetuated by the SAWP.

Advancing Global Health Equity in the COVID-19 Response: Beyond Solidarity.

In the coming weeks and months SARS-CoV-2 may ravage countries with weak health systems and populations disproportionately affected by HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and other infectious diseases. Without safeguards and proper attention to global health equity and justice, the effects of this pandemic are likely to exacerbate existing health and socio-economic inequalities. This paper argues that achieving global health equity in the context of COVID-19 will require that notions of reciprocity and relational equity are introduced to the response.