Southasian Conversation #2: Getting the jab done
Like the pandemic itself, the problems faced by the inoculation drives over the past few months has revealed to us the confines of public health and the need to confront existing political, social and economic structures of our societies. In this second edition of Southasian Conversation, a series of online crossborder conversation, we hope to sift through the information (and jargon) to bring you interdisciplinary perspectives on COVID-19 vaccinations in Southasia. In this wide-ranging public conversation, recorded on 29 April, the panel explored the debates on vaccine production and distribution, the crisis of global and regional collaboration, and what the challenges of COVID-19 vaccination tells us about our fraught social contract. • Moderator: Thomas Abraham (Director of the Public Health Communications Programme at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong. Based in Bengaluru.) Panellists: • Zyma Islam (Data journalist and reporter for The Daily Star. Based in Dhaka.) • Ravindra Rannan-Eliya (Physician, economist and researcher. Executive Director and Fellow of the Institute of Health (IHP). Based in Colombo.) • Dwaipayan Banerjee (Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.) • Orzala Nemat (Afghan activist, scholar, political ethnographer and Director of Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU). Based in London/Kabul.) https://www.himalmag.com/getting-the-jab-done-southasian-conversation-2-2021/ The full discussion is now available on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3xS5F0j and Spotify: spoti.fi/3b6oTVZ Apple podcasts: apple.co/3tmuZrO
