This book analyses the threats the COVID-19 pandemic poses and the need for managing healthcare resources carefully. Focusing on the impact Lower and middle-income countries experience due to the lack of medical personal, bed in hospitals and medical supplies. In the chapters, non-medical researchers together with epidemiologists contribute studies which aim to improve decision making processes when dealing with pandemic dynamics. The book also presents challenging models for post-pandemic studies and the continuation of post-pandemic treatments. This text develops an analysis of COVID-19 data and provides evidence on the increase of social inequalities with Latin American countries, and particularly on the effect of a new medicament in improving the quality of life of recovered patients with lung damage. This book would be of interest to all medical researchers and academics interested in the effects of both the pandemic and post pandemic fallout.

An Ibero-American Perspective on Narratives of Pandemics is a critique of the realities of the pandemic in the Ibero-American world and its intertwined relationship with the environment. Through a critical gaze into the history of the region as it has evolved through periods of socio-environmental and cultural conflicts, the book chronicles multiple experiences of how people managed to negotiate multiple crises on a daily basis by often clinging to their age old cultural and healing practices, as well as the humanistic representation of such experiences in various fictional and nonfictional writings. The contributors expose the biopolitics around COVID-19 and its effects particularly on marginalised populations and the environment in an effort to consider the complexity of the pandemic in its multiple dimensions. They evaluate it through climatic, socioeconomic, political, scientific, and cultural lenses that they argue shaped the realities of the pandemic. They also take a close look at the use and effects of language in virtual spaces, implying it has the ability to construct/mis-construct reality in this postmodern world, arguing there is a need for a new environmental ethic post-pandemic.

'Pandemic and Narration: Covid-19 Narratives in Latin America' sheds light on how, as Covid-19 spread, infecting and killing millions across the world, life not only continued to be experienced but also continued to be narrated. By putting together this volume, we help understand what happened in the region from a perspective in which, unlike most of what we saw during the health emergency, numbers, statistics and percentages are not at the centre of the analysis. The essays gathered here foreground something else: the manifold ways Covid-19 was subjectively and collectively narrated in the news, government reports, political speeches, NGO communications, social media, literature, songs and many other media. From a wide range of disciplinary approaches, the contributors to this edition pay attention to how fictional and non-fictional stories, official discourses, as well as personal and political accounts, documented, represented and shaped the health crisis, laying bare how —in Latin American countries— the spread of the virus intersected with corruption, gender-based violence, inequality and exclusion, as with community, solidarity and hope. Readers will find that the focus on narrative provides an alternative source of knowledge on Latin America’s Covid-19 experience. Our perspective contrasts with the usual emphasis on death tolls, infection rates, weekly cases, vaccination counts, and the plethora of statistics that illustrated the gravity of the situation in the build-up to, during, and after the peak of the crisis. While extremely important to understand the situation, numbers do not tell the whole story. A comprehensive picture of the pandemic can only be achieved when the stories of the virus are accounted for. Health, after all, is no stranger to narrative. And neither is Latin America.

This book brings together the work of more than 25 scholars from different parts of the world who analyze the challenges posed by the new coronavirus and how it can transform the lives of the cities. Through 19 chapters organized into three sections - experiences, responses and uncertainties - the authors offer a novel perspective about the resilience of the metropolis to face the most important sanitary crisis in the twenty-first century. History shows that cities can innovate and change profoundly in a response to disasters or after suffering an intense crisis, such as a pandemic or dramatic local spread of infectious diseases. In many cases, cities evolve to better urban systems, as literature based on the resilience perspective suggests. From this perspective, this book is a unique contribution to the academic discussion offering a multidisciplinary approach to analyze the impact of COVID-19 in the cities.

This book gathers a selection of peer-reviewed research papers presented at the joint IV ASOCIO/XIX IISE Region 16 Conference held in Chia and Bogota, Colombia. The conference was organized by the Universidad de La Sabana’s Research Group on Logistics Systems, in partnership with Chapters #782 (Universidad de La Sabana), #712 (Universidad Sergio Arboleda) and #988 (Universidad de Los Andes) of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). The main emphasis of the book is on modelling and solving business-related problems in operations research, and on applying descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics and the management sciences to actual decision-making in organizations. Both theoretical developments and algorithm implementation are presented. A special focus is given to business problems arising in emerging economies, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. This book is addressed to academics, practitioners, postgraduate students and researchers in operations research, analytics and industrial engineering, as well as to undergraduate students for educational purposes. In particular, the book will appeal to the academic and research community in Latin America and the Caribbean, as it presents projects developed and implemented there. Higher education engineering programs will benefit from the findings and insights shared in the fields of industrial engineering, operations research and analytics, applied mathematics, and computer science and engineering.

This highly topical edited book documents the community response to Covid-19 across national contexts, exploring the widespread development and mobilisation of community initiatives and groups. It provides rich analysis of case studies from the Global North and South, including South Africa, the USA, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Australia, the UK, Turkey, and Argentina. The Covid-19 pandemic motivated a significant community response globally, with the widespread development and mobilisation of "bottom up" community initiatives and groups. These community responses were an essential yet often unseen and unrecognised means by which people survived the pandemic. This book asks questions such as how were community responses to Covid-19 shaped by national, cultural and political processes and phenomena; how did community responses to Covid-19 interact with public policies, on health, education, and social welfare; and what are the likely political implications of the community response to Covid-19? Discussing the provision of abortion care in Latin America, the support to marginalized communities in Kolkata, and the mobilisation of carnival "krewes" in New Orleans, to give a few examples, the text adopts and develops a novel socio-cultural psychological approach, weaving together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplinary fields. The text highlights the importance of integrating multiple levels of analysis, including psychological, sociological, and political/ideological, to investigate how communities respond to crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they can plan for and manage future crises. This is essential reading for academics and students in psychology and the social sciences, as well as policy-makers, charities, and third-sector organisations.

This book explores new models and future possibilities of university governance in a Latin American context using management and leadership theories. The dramatic changes and uncertainty facing the world recently have forced us to reimagine the future of education. Changes such as digitalization, the increasing number of corporate universities, and the need for cost-effective educational programs and services require universities to keep evolving while ensuring that they maintain their essence as a critical social asset. This book offers a new approach to managing and leading the university, particularly by embracing the role and responsibility of delivering quality educational programs and services, by being innovative and flexible enough to make urgent decisions and act upon them in a timely and appropriate manner. With its contributions to management and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary book will serve as a valuable resource to researchers, administrators, and students alike.