Good Health Indicators are Not Enough: Lessons from COVID-19 in Peru

Camila Gianella, Ruth Iguiñiz-Romero, María José Romero, and Jasmine Gideon (2020)
Health and Human Rights Journal

Peru received international acclaim for being one of the first countries to implement a comprehensive package of measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government imposed a general lockdown, combined with social protection measures—mainly cash transfers and the distribution of food parcels. This was an attempt to mitigate the impact of the lockdown, in a country where 70% of the population works in the informal sector. Yet despite this, the transmission rate remained high, and as of early June Peru’s COVID-19 mortality rates were amongst the highest worldwide. The pandemic has shed a stark light on Peru’s failure to guarantee the right to health and the limits of the tools used to assess the health system’s performance.

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Publication is an output of LawTransform project Effects of rights & law.

 Camila Gianella is the Executive Director of CISEPA Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, a researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and a Global Fellow at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation. 

Ruth Iguiniz-Romero is Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Administration. Cayetano Heredia University, Peru.

María José Romero is a PhD candidate, SOAS, University of London, UK and Policy and Advocacy Manager at the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad).

Jasmine Gideon is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash