https://www.scmp.com/rss/16070/feed Robert Peckham is professor of history and director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com As the likelihood of a Covid-19 pandemic increases, there are signs of growing frustration among public health scientists, medical practitioners and health agencies. Weeks into the outbreak, there is still so much that is uncertain about the pathogen and its epidemiology. And while time may be running out on the biomedical front, the health community has been battling to put out another fire. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, declared at the Munich... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3052708/covid-19-infodemic-stem-tide-panic-we-need-understand-peoples-fears?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3052708/covid-19-infodemic-stem-tide-panic-we-need-understand-peoples-fears?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Mar 2020 01:00:10 +0000 International views on China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan have been divided, but in recent days criticism has become more strident. On his return from meetings in Beijing a week ago, the director general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, commended China’s “extraordinary” response, telling reporters how “very impressed and encouraged” he was by the handling of the epidemic. An editorial in The Lancet praised the Chinese authorities, applauding the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3048928/coronavirus-testing-limits-chinas-and-hong-kongs-preparedness?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3048928/coronavirus-testing-limits-chinas-and-hong-kongs-preparedness?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 05 Feb 2020 22:00:18 +0000 On the first day of the new academic year, the campus of the University of Hong Kong was as glum as a washed out holiday. Yes, there were students in the classrooms, but there was none of that first-day-of-semester camaraderie that usually animates the corridors. The jumble of anti-government posters stuck up on the walls looked utterly forlorn, a hopeless cri de coeur. Ostensibly, it’s business as usual, despite the proposed class boycott. The university’s senior management has reiterated its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3025711/critical-hour-hong-kong-universities-can-help-us-find-our-way-back?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3025711/critical-hour-hong-kong-universities-can-help-us-find-our-way-back?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Sep 2019 06:30:08 +0000 With 28 local cases of dengue fever confirmed in August, Hong Kong’s fevered history is rebounding in the present. According to the World Health Organisation, 40 per cent of the global population is at risk of dengue, with Asia at the epicentre. Last month’s outbreak in Hong Kong was the worst in recent times. Despite the city’s much-vaunted epidemic surveillance system and a widely publicised anti-mosquito offensive, there is a public perception that health authorities have been caught off... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2163584/why-dengue-fever-prevention-calls-attention-big?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2163584/why-dengue-fever-prevention-calls-attention-big?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 11 Sep 2018 04:00:45 +0000 Will reading literature, listening to music and studying history make you a better person? First the bad news: not necessarily. Witness the second world war when Nazi officers relished Romantic poetry and music even as they flicked the death switches. The humanities - academic disciplines that reflect upon the human condition - manifestly weren't doing their job: they weren't humanising. This bleak view of the humanities as a failed humanising project has cast a long shadow over debates about... https://www.scmp.com/article/695084/dose-humanities-good-medicine-after-all?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/695084/dose-humanities-good-medicine-after-all?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000