Combating COVID-19: The Chinese and Danish Perspectives
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has been shocking in every sense of the word. An enormous challenge to global health, its consequences on economy and political order, at both the national and international level, have been deeply felt and will continue to evolve in the years to come.
Strategic responses to health crisis vary significantly among countries. China, which experienced the first wave of this epidemic, adopted very aggressive and thick containment measures. It has helped bring the contagion to heel so far. In many European countries, which feature different sociopolitical infrastructures and civic norms, responses appear to be relatively thin and less draconian, yet with notable variations. Such a difference is pronounced even within the Nordic region.
Why and how have the approaches of response been introduced the way they have? How can countries pursue effective global cooperation in curbing COVID-19? This dialogue aims to put these issues in perspectives by comparing the Chinese and Danish experiences. It seeks to promote an informed debate and nuanced understanding about the variety of strategic choices in the struggling for survival and solidarity.
Programme
The event will start with a special talk by Prof. Dr. Zhu Chouwen, Vice President of Shanghai’s Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, and team leader of Shanghai Medical Support Team to Hubei province. Prof. Zhu will share his first-hand experience fighting COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei province, including hospital protocols, patient management and surgical approaches.
Afterwards, Prof. Flemming Konradsen, director of the School of Global Health, University of Copenhagen will talk on the implications of fighting COVID-19 for countries with vulnerable healthcare systems, and which role, if any, Denmark will have in the fight against COVID-19 globally.
The two presentations will be followed by an open discussion.
Time: Friday the 29th of May 2020, 11 AM - 12 PM.
Platform: Zoom.
The event will be opened by Prof. Duncan McCargo, director of NIAS and moderated by Dr. Chunrong Liu, managing director of Fudan-European Centre for China Studies.
All are welcome to attend, but registration is required. Please register using this link.
About the speakers
Prof. Dr. Zhu Chouwen is vice president of Shanghai’s Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, and team leader of Shanghai Medical Support Team to Hubei province. He graduated from the Peking Union Medical College in 1992 with a PhD in medical sciences; he has conducted research at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Prof. Flemming Konradsen, professor of international environmental health at the University of Copenhagen, has more than twenty years of research and programming experience in the field of environmental health and global health. He is also the director of the Copenhagen School of Global Health. His research methods include epidemiology, qualitative studies, costing studies, health promotion and health system analysis. He has extensive experience from multidisciplinary field-based research.