The 1st edition of the Africa Region Biomedical Engineering and Health Technology ConferenceLink opens in a new window is being held in Nairobi, Kenya, from the 6th to 8th of September of 2023. This was organised by AMEKLink opens in a new window Kenya, supported by the IFMBELink opens in a new window Africa Biomedical Engineering working group, which also has representatives at Warwick (Dr Davide Piaggio), and by the IFMBE (Prof Leandro Pecchia is Secretary General).

The African Conversations Series is a regular monthly talk series held by the Africa Institute, Western University, Canada, to keep conversations going on key and pertinent African topics. A talk is held each month, presenting contemporary African and African Diaspora topics. The next webinar will feature Prof. Pecchia from the ABSPIE Lab discussing ‘Biomedical Engineering in low-resource settings’.

Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020, after the first infections in China at the end of 2019, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a global emergency and continued to spread across the world. No country, including Republic of Benin in Africa and Italy in Europe, has been able to escape this disease. Its impact on human health, is disrupting an interconnected world economy through global value chains, given the impact on the entire world population and the economy.

In Benin, from 14th March 2020, the evolution of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is epidemiologically recorded at 3363 cases confirmed, 95 cases recovered, 46 case dead (January 2021).

Even if the social contexts seem very different, the pandemic creates in healthcare systems of all around the world, a generalized condition of low-resource settings (LRSs), i.e., environments lacking means, specific knowledge, specialized personnel, medical devices, and drugs, and with inappropriate medical locations. In fact, while this condition was already familiar to low- and middle-income countries, COVID-19 has overwhelmingly reported LRS conditions in high-income countries, such as Europe. In addition, the social and ethical impact of the pandemic calls sociology and bioethics to reflect on the perception that the population has of this situation, i.e. the possibility to respect the measures of isolation, the availability of personal protection equipment, the criteria for access to the scarce health resources available.

Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre For International Development

Applied Biomedical Signal Processing and Intelligent e-Health Lab

15 March 2021 • 10-11am (UK time)

Alessia Maccaro - University of Warwick

Leandro Pecchia - University of Warwick

Davide Piaggio - University of Warwick

Marius Vignigbé - University of Abomey-Calavi

Roch A. Houngnihin - University of Abomey-Calavi

https://tinyurl.com/wicidcovidbenin