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China has been contributing to new approaches to global governance. The Health Silk Road (HSR), a significant component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was proposed by China in 2016. This paper claims that HSR is a new institution introduced alongside the existing WHO-led multilateral health system, and its relationship with the existing system can be described as layering. Having explored the new development of HSR during COVID-19, this paper further argues that while HSR has its unique strength in making contributions to global health governance and economic recovery, it faces a prominent issue of securitisation in the context of China-U.S. strategic competition, suspicion of the quality of medical products and sectoral fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cambodia’s current abortion rate and ratio could be among the highest in Southeast Asia. In 1997, the Cambodian parliament passed the first law regulating abortions. This law was adopted to contribute to reduce the high maternal mortality ratio, as a significant number of maternal deaths were believed to be related to complications of unsafe abortion. A decade later, the Ministry of Health had not yet established medical protocols for safe abortion access and women often continued to induce their own terminations or seek unsafe services. However, in 2009, the Cambodian authorities approved the importation and distribution of one manufactured abortion pill. In addition, manual vacuum abortions and medical abortion training programmes were implemented at the referral hospital level. How has this situation come about? What do we know about the local agencies of the transnational reproductive health policies related to safe abortion access in this country? This paper aims to analyse how history and intersections between global interventions, state policies, local moralities and individual strategies shape abortion policies, practices and technologies. Finally, our findings raise some issues for public health programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]