Our political class must set aside differences to act quickly and with compassion to ensure economic security and well-being of the vulnerable, as we fight back second wave of Covid-19, says Vikram Patel in an Op-Ed for The Indian Express.
The years of post-mortem that follow will dissect how we arrived here. But for now, the path out of the current inferno requires unwavering commitment to science, and perhaps tremendous rectitude. Let us examine what we can do in the coming months.
In the third episode of The COVID Chronicles podcast, Dr. Satchit Balsari speaks with Manoj Mohanan, Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Mohanan’s team’s recent paper, published in Lancet Global Health, reports that seroprevalence (the number of individuals in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on serology specimens) in Mumbai varies from 55–61% in the slums, to 12–19% in non-slum settings.
In the second episode of The COVID Chronicles podcast, Dr. Satchit Balsari speaks with Enakshi Ganguly, child rights activist and the co-founder of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. In July 2020, Ganguly was part of the 11-member expert committee set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on human rights, especially those of marginalized and vulnerable sections of the society. Ganguly led the discussion related to the advisory on the rights of children.
The India In-Focus podcast is back with a special mini-series, “The COVID Chronicles,” which examines the science, policy, and societal response to COVID-19 pandemic in India. Over the course of this seven-part series as we count down to the one-year mark of the nationwide lockdown in India, our host Dr. Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, speaks with experts across numerous industries. In each episode, Dr. Balsari explores with his guests the key issues surrounding India’s response to the pandemic and the challenges that lie ahead.
Through a collaboration between the Tata Trusts and the Mittal Institute, the project “Designing a Sanitation Hub” will yield a series of design drawings and representations of how a sanitation “hub” will be configured spatially in both rural and urban settings, including indigenous community settlements (such as the koliwadas and lal dora areas) to high-density squatter settlements.
Last year, the Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program received 6,093 total applications from 115 countries spanning the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, South Asia, and US students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Selected students joined the Crossroads Virtual Program via Zoom to attend an interdisciplinary seminar series uniquely designed for them, curated to encourage their individual professional and academic aspirations. The Crossroads Virtual Program featured 13 fascinating and insightful lessons given by senior Harvard faculty across a range of disciplines.
The Mittal Institute’s Program for Conservation of Culture (PCC) promotes a climate for cultural conservation in South Asia. It aims to bring the global values of conservation practices in conversation with local needs and the existing know-how of materials, resources, climate, legal parameters, and history to build a stronger foundation for present and future safekeeping and conservation of South Asia’s heritage. As a part of the PCC, the Mittal Institute hosted two recent panel discussions on recent developments in science and the impact of these developments on the field of art conservation globally and in South Asia
For many years, a group of faculty members at Harvard — Tarun Khanna (HBS), Satchit Balsari (HMS), Rahul Mehrotra (GSD), Krzysztof Gajos (SEAS), and Doris Sommer (FAS) — have taught a GenEd course, entitled “Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems.” The course, initially created by Professor Khanna with the support of the Mittal Institute, covers case studies from emerging markets across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each year, about 100 students enroll in the course from a variety of backgrounds, including undergraduate and graduate students — from sophomores at Harvard College to budding surgeons at Harvard Medical School.
Recently, a discussion moderated by Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, brought together Satchit Balsari, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Manoj Mohanan, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Global Health at Duke University, to discuss “A Class Apart: COVID-19 Seroprevalence in India.” Together, they explored the findings and implications of a recent seroprevalence survey (the number of individuals in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on serology specimens) conducted by Professor Mohanan’s team in India.
This past week, a panel of experts came together to explore the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and how India, China, and the United States are responding to it. The discussion was moderated by Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School, and hosted by Winnie Yip, Professor of Global Health Policy and Economics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Acting Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
We spoke with Vikram Patel, the Pershing Square Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, to learn more about the status of mental health in India and South Asia at large, both before and during the pandemic.