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In this commentary, we examine the fashion industry’s early responses to COVID-19. Looking across fashion’s global production networks, we argue the fashion industry’s response has been rapid, yet highly inequitable, reflecting—and further entrenching—existing inequalities in the industry.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a complex disease with elevated risk of respiratory comorbidities.1,2 Severely affected patients are often treated with immune-modulating systemic drugs.3,4 On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organization declared the 2019 novel coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-Cov-2) epidemic to be a pandemic. The number of cases worldwide is increasing exponentially and poses a major health threat, especially for those who are elderly, immuno-compromised, or have comorbidities. This also applies to AD patients on systemic immune-modulating treatment. In these days of uncertainty, reallocation of medical resources, curfew, hoarding, and shutdown of normal social life, patients, caregivers and doctors ask questions regarding the continuation of systemic immune-modulating treatment of AD patients. The ETFAD decided to address some of these questions here.

This comparative study explores parental involvement during the process of mainstreaming Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Using an ethnographic approach with emphasis on a subtle realist ontology it compares two ECE centers operationalisations of parental involvement and staff's experiences of this aspect of their work. Findings showed that the centers had to navigate cultural underpinnings of parental mistrust and knowledge deficiency in their operationalisation of parental involvement. The centers navigated the cultural conditions by allowing parents CCTV access, or by providing parental education and workshops via scaffolding techniques of experts to gain an audience amongst parents. The center's proactive or reactive approach during the initial stages of parental involvement resulted in various implications for the continuous collaboration between staff and parents at the center. The study contextualises parental involvement within the broader Bangladeshi society, suggesting that the ECE centers becomes an external societal actor interfering in home life, creating a collision between cultural understandings of the home (poribar/bari) and the ECE center, which presented hindrances to parental involvement. The study additionally discusses implications of the Covid-19 epidemic and suggestions for the future of ECE mainstreaming in Bangladesh.

Föreliggande uppsats undersöker hur introduktionen av nyanställda, som under pågående Covid-19-pandemi till stor del genomförs på distans, påverkas vad det gäller utformning och kvalitet, samt hur den upplevs av den nyanställde. Studien är en kvalitativ intervjustudie med induktiv ansats. Urvalet består av personer som börjat ett nytt arbete i kunskapsorganisationer under perioden mars 2020 till januari 2021 och som huvudsakligen introducerats och arbetat på distans. Materialet har analyserats tematiskt och resultatet analyseras och diskuteras utifrån tidigare studier av introduktionsprocesser, lärande och socialiseringsprocesser på arbetsplatser. Resultatet visar att introduktionen i sina beståndsdelar liknar den som sker fysiskt, men att den med fördel kan anpassas mer till de förutsättningar som distansarbete och en mer digital interaktion medför. Moment som sker naturligt i en fysisk miljö upplevs som konstlade när de replikeras digitalt och relationsbyggande, som i tidigare forskning identifieras som den enskilt viktigaste beståndsdelen i en introduktion, tar längre tid, både med kollegor och med arbetsgivaren. Stort ansvar läggs på den nyanställde att själv bygga relationer, söka information, förstå sin uppgift och forma sin roll. Att från arbetsgivarens sida ge stöd genom att visa närvaro och förståelse för att detta sker och tar tid kan öka chansen att den nyanställde upplever sig som värdefull, sedd och därmed även som en del av företaget. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the onboarding of new employees, which during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic is largely done remotely, is affected in terms of design and quality, and how it is experienced by the new employee. The study is a qualitative interview-based study with an inductive approach. The sample consists of people who have started a new job in knowledge-based organizations during the period March 2020 to January 2021 and who have mainly been onboarded and worked remotely. The material has been analyzed thematically and the results have been analyzed and discussed based on previous studies of introduction processes, learning and socialization processes in workplaces. The results show that activities in the digital onboarding are similar to those that take place physically, but that the activities would benefit from being adapted to the conditions that telework and more digital interactions entail. Elements that occur naturally in a physical environment are perceived as artificial when they are replicated digitally and relationship building, which in previous research is stated as the single most important variable in an introduction, takes longer, both with colleagues and with the employer. A large responsibility is placed on the new employees to build relationships, seek information, understand the tasks and shape the work by themselves. Giving support from the employer by showing presence, support and understanding for this time-consuming process can increase the chance that the new employee feels valued, seen and thus also as part of the company.

Contribution Requirements and Redistribution Decisions: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh uses a controlled experiment to assess the effects of requiring co-funding to development programs on the efficiency and distribution of benefits within the community. Market Access and Quality Upgrading: Evidence from Randomized Experiments tests if increasing reward to quality produce improves profits, agricultural productivity, and input use, using a randomized experiment in Uganda. How do community contribution requirements affect local public good provision? Experimental evidence from safe water sources in Bangladesh evaluates how community contribution requirement –in cash and labour– change take-up and impact of a development intervention through a randomized experiment of water source construction. Do community water sources provide safe drinking water? Evidence from a randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh exploits a random experiment to analyse how effectively the construction of community water sources improves drinking water quality. Predicted COVID-19 fatality rates based on age, sex, comorbidities, and health system capacity extrapolates adjustments to estimate COVID-19 fatality rates from high-income to lower-income regions. The Macroeconomics of Pandemics in Developing Countries: an Application to Uganda models how optimal pandemic containment varies from high- to lower-income countries.

Syftet med denna studie är att med narrativet i fokus undersöka hur fem sjuksköterskor ser på sittarbete och hur de navigerat sig igenom det under COVID-19 pandemin. Det empiriska materialetbestår av semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer som hölls med fem sjuksköterskor som alla vårdatcovidpatienter. Materialet analyserades genom tematisk narrativ analys och strukturell narrativ analys.Den tematiska analysen identifierade ett antal övergripande teman i sjuksköterskornas berättelser;bakgrund, tillbakablickande, nya arbets- och förhållningssätt, kollegialt stöd, samarbete ochreflektioner samt ovisshet och kunskapsbrist. Sjuksköterskornas berättelser har analyserats genombegreppet meningsskapande samt med Labov och Waletzkys modell om narrativets struktur. Urresultaten framkom att sjuksköterskorna behövt orientera sig genom händelser de inte vetat hur de skaagera inom. För att orientera sig har samtliga informanter påbörjat en meningsskapande process för atttillmäta förståelse till situationen där berättandet haft en central funktion i att göra detta. The aim of this study is to with focus on narratives examine how five nurses view their work and howthey’ve navigated through it during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical data consists ofqualitative semi-structured interviews with five nurses who have been caring for patients diagnosedwith COVID-19. The material was analysed through a thematic narrative analysis and structuralnarrative analysis. The results from the thematic analysis identified a number of general themesretrieved from the nurses’ narratives: background, retrospection, new modes for operation and approach, collegial support, teamwork and reflections as well as uncertainty and knowledge-deficiency. The nurses’ narratives have been analysed through the concept of sensemaking as well as Labov and Waletzky’s model about narrative structure. The results showed that the nurses’ have beencompelled to adjust to events that they lack previous knowledge within. In order for the informants toadjust, they have begun a sensemaking process to allot understanding of the situation in whichnarrating has played a central part.

Since the last century, many wars and violations of Human Rights were direct reasons that set the pace to develop Human Rights laws, especially after the end of World War II and the holocausts associated with it. One of the critical Human Rights is that ‘to life’, relating to the right ‘to health’, hence the fundamental accessibility to healthcare services and products. Nonetheless, the last decades have witnessed a significant growth in pharmaceutical patents leading to increased drug prices. Overshoots in prices prohibit access to medicine. Disputes between States, pharmaceutical corporations, patients, and investors have occurred, some of which were not purely related to monetary aspects but also to Human Rights, such as the right to ‘access to medicine’. These disputes are controversial. The applicable legal regimes are patent laws (e.g., the TRIPS Agreement) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL) including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), European Social Charter, and more. However, it is up to the courts to decide on whether to consider IHRL in the legal decision process. The question turns to whether they consider the two regimes to be intersecting or independent. This thesis tackles the area of intersection between patent law and the right to ‘access to medicine’ in cases of pandemics such as inter alia HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. It investigates whether the right to ‘access to medicine’ exists as a human right by law, to jump to examine whether solutions like Compulsory Licenses (CLs) and patent exceptions are suitable. Then it answers the question whether there should be defragmentation of laws or not. The work analyzes available caselaw to seek a balance between patent laws and the human right to ‘access to medicine’ during pandemics. Caselaw shows that the conflict makes the overlap of laws confusing and in need of determining the set of relevant provisions in the applicable norms. The question on defragmentation in answered by focusing on Section 5 of the TRIPS Agreement and some provisions in IHRL instruments. The thesis proposes a defragmentation of applicable laws that aids in looking at previous solutions to reach the sought balance, and it sheds the light to give recommendations. The work finally recommends being proactive, for times of pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak, and working on the realization of a unified and harmonized EU patent law to keep up to the objective of delivering quality vaccines/antivirals, on time, within budget, and with supporting applicable laws. 

Abstract Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) is a means to support patients with acute respiratory failure. Initially, recommendations to treat severe cases of pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) with ECLS have been restrained. In the meantime, ECLS has been shown to produce similar outcomes in patients with severe COVID‐19 compared to existing data on ARDS mortality. We performed an international email survey to assess how ECLS providers worldwide have previously used ECLS during the treatment of critically ill patients with COVID‐19. A questionnaire with 45 questions (covering, e.g., indication, technical aspects, benefit, and reasons for treatment discontinuation), mostly multiple choice, was distributed by email to ECLS centers. The survey was approved by the European branch of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO); 276 ECMO professionals from 98 centers in 30 different countries on four continents reported that they employed ECMO for very severe COVID‐19 cases, mostly in veno‐venous configuration (87%). The most common reason to establish ECLS was isolated hypoxemic respiratory failure (50%), followed by a combination of hypoxemia and hypercapnia (39%). Only a small fraction of patients required veno‐arterial cannulation due to heart failure (3%). Time on ECLS varied between less than 2 and more than 4 weeks. The main reason to discontinue ECLS treatment prior to patient’s recovery was lack of clinical improvement (53%), followed by major bleeding, mostly intracranially (13%). Only 4% of respondents reported that triage situations, lack of staff or lack of oxygenators, were responsible for discontinuation of ECLS support. Most ECLS physicians (51%, IQR 30%) agreed that patients with COVID‐19‐induced ARDS (CARDS) benefitted from ECLS. Overall mortality of COVID‐19 patients on ECLS was estimated to be about 55%. ECLS has been utilized successfully during the COVID‐19 pandemic to stabilize CARDS patients in hypoxemic or hypercapnic lung failure. Age and multimorbidity limited the use of ECLS. Triage situations were rarely a concern. ECLS providers stated that patients with severe COVID‐19 benefitted from ECLS. 276 ECMO professionals from 98 centers worldwide participated in this EuroELSO‐associated online survey investigating the use of ECMO for severe COVID‐19. Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) for severe COVID‐19 was used predominantly in veno‐venous configuration (87%) to treat isolated hypoxic respiratory failure (50%). Age and multimorbidity limited the use of ECLS. Overall mortality of COVID‐19 patients on ECLS was estimated to be about 55%.