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Human Rights and Fighting Discrimination during Epidemics

'Human Rights & Fighting discrimination during epidemics' takes up the way that COVID-19 has acted as a transmission belt of wider social anxieties around justice, equity and prejudice. Hosted by Dr Thea de Gruchy -- who works on rural farm workers health struggles, the discussion threads insights from Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng,  a medical doctor, women and health rights activist, recently appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, together with the research findings of Professor Jo Veary,  whose publications focus on social justice in urban and public health, and the social determinants of health.

Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Health Rights

Dr Tialeng Mofokeng is  South African medical doctor and a women's rights and sexual and reproductive health rights activist. She has been appointed as the new United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

Associate Prof Jo Vearey

Associate Professor

Prof Jo Vearey is an Associate Professor with the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand. She holds an Honorary Fellowship with the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Senior Fellowship at the Centre for Peace, Development and Democracy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2015, Jo was awarded a Humanities and Social Science Wellcome Trust Investigator Award.

Dr Thea de Gruchy

Post Doctoral Fellow at ACMS

Thea de Gruchy is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Migration and Health Project (maHp) at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand. Over the last six months, Thea has been involved in the organisation of the Migration and Coronavirus in Southern Africa Co-ordination Group (MiCoSA), in addition to undertaking research exploring the implications that Covid19 and the South African lockdown have had on migration and migrant and mobile populations in the region.

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