November 17, 2019. The first SARS-CoV-2 case was confirmed in a 55-year-old man in Hubei province, China. As more and more cases are confirmed, public health experts start advising people to wear masks and social distance. Eventually in March 2020, COVID was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Schools started transitioning online and the first severe 21st-century pandemic ensued. In times of a dire public health crisis, the heavy burden of national and global health often falls onto governments, public cooperation, and pharmaceutical companies. These stakeholders often come to odds over how to address intellectual property (IP) rights now, especially in the context of COVID vaccines.

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Despite being one of the most developed nations in the world, the United States continues to suffer from disparities in healthcare. An important but overlooked reason stems from racially motivated ideologies within the medical field that correspond to higher rates of complications and deaths for groups of people.

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A pressing issue facing our community today is the lack of free menstrual products in public buildings and spaces. Every day, menstruators are left without a feeling of security, worrying about if they have access to the supplies they need while being on their period. Just like toilet paper is free in all public restrooms, menstrual products, such as pads and tampons, should be available for free in public restrooms. There are many people who are not able to afford period products and live in what we call “period poverty.”

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While it is expected that an uncommon disease does not receive as much research and funding as more common afflictions such as lung cancer, sickle cell disease is underfunded as compared to other orphan diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF) and hemophilia. Both CF and hemophilia have smaller patient populations than SCD, but the diseases receive more funding for research and treatment centers. A 2020 study found that federal funding was greater per person with CF than with sickle cell, corresponding to more research articles and FDA drug approvals. Hemophilia receives more funding than SCD despite also having a lower rate of incidence (2.3 cases per 10,000 male births versus 4.9 cases per 10,0000 births).

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During the war, the Assad regime became notorious for besieging civilians, using chemical weapons, and deliberately targeting hospitals and healthcare workers, the focus of this paper. Between 2011 and 2020, there were 595 attacks on healthcare infrastructure, 536 of which were conducted by the Syrian government and the Russian Air Force, leading to the deaths of 923 medical personnel. By 2021, half of all health facilities in the nation were destroyed, and 70% of surviving healthcare workers have fled the country.

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Due to employer-based insurance as the primary form of healthcare coverage in the United States, the onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and related large-scale shutdowns led to massive job and thus coverage losses throughout the initial stages of the pandemic. The overlap between “essential workers” and the under-insured or uninsured leads to inadequate medical treatments and interventions that likely cannot be prevented without altering or redesigning the entire American health insurance system.

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Households lacking access to effective sewage management systems must often resort to substandard, crude solutions. This introduces various health risks, such as parasitic infection, which has been documented in the American South. Legacies of discrimination have resulted in financial pressures and legal complexities for residents in the Southern region, limiting the ability of residents to independently address sanitation challenges at their homes.

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