The Covid-19 pandemic has posed the unprecedented challenge of distributing vaccines to the bulk of the world’s population. Excluded from the main deals for vaccine provision and still suffering from underfunded and under-resourced health systems, African countries have been forced into the position of recipients of Great Power health largesse. Despite accusations levelled at China and Russia for using “vaccine diplomacy” as a ploy to enhance their soft power, the US and Europe have so far offered little health support to African countries.

Even as we seek to overcome the global pandemic, humanity faces three planetary crisis that threaten our future - the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the pollution and waste crisis – driven by decades of relentless and unsustainable consumption and production.

Much of global health research occurs against the backdrop of severe, intersectional and structural vulnerabilities, where susceptibility to disease and early death are driven by poverty, and related factors such as political conflict and climate change. Global health research priorities over the last two decades have been shaped by a small number of high income country institutions, with political commitments informed largely by the ‘global burden of disease’ model.

We are at a crossroads. Covid-19 has wreaked havoc but also offers the potential for radical change.

Ian Goldin explains why bouncing back to business as usual would be disastrous, leading to escalating inequality, potentially more devastating pandemics and escalating climate change. Drawing on the experience of history, Ian identifies how during the Second World War the welfare state and new world order was created to build more cohesive societies and overcome global threats.

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‘Politics’ and ‘political’ are widely used as labels in speaking of social situations in which there is conflict. A more precise understanding of politics will be defended in which it appears as just one form of rule. Following Aristotle’s usage, it is argued that not all forms of rule of states are political in the full sense. This approach entails a challenge whether Catholic Social Thought can accommodate an adequate account of conflict.