Should our academic approach towards researching South asia change due to COVID-19?

As COVID-19 disrupts established research norms, many methodological and ethical questions have come to the forefront of the debate on how we study South Asia. Here Nabeela Ahmed, Sally Cawood, Sarita Panday, Megnaa Mehtta, Glyn Williams, Jiban Kumar Karki and Ankit Kumar (Research collective, University of Sheffield) reflect on their recent discussions on whether researchers should consider changing the way they conduct their work in the wake of the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: Emerging evidence on the effectiveness of action by, and cooperation between, different levels of government in a federal system

A new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by a novel pathogen (SARS-CoV-2) spread rapidly around the world in the early months of 2020, and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March. COVID-19 has, and continues to have, large implications for individuals, societies, and for national health systems across the globe. Due to its novelty and impact, it has challenged all health care systems where the virus has taken hold. The ways in which governments and health systems have responded have varied widely across the world. In the case of Nepal, the pandemic represented a major test for the newly decentralised health system, created as a result of the implementation of the 2015 federal constitution. This paper, which forms a part of our large on-going study of the decentralisation of the health system in the country, presents some of the early evidence on the effectiveness of the actions taken by Federal, Provincial and Local Governments and the levels of cooperation and coordination between them