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Review
. 2021 Jun:12:100228.
doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2021.100228. Epub 2021 Feb 17.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: A syndemic perspective

Inês Fronteira  1 , Mohsin Sidat  2 , João Paulo Magalhães  3 , Fernando Passos Cupertino de Barros  4 , António Pedro Delgado  5 , Tiago Correia  1 , Cláudio Tadeu Daniel-Ribeiro  6 , Paulo Ferrinho  1
Affiliations
Review

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: A syndemic perspective

Inês Fronteira et al. One Health. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has affected communities, populations, and countries throughout the world. As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic developed, the extent to which the disease interacted with already existing endemic, non-communicable and infectious diseases became evident, hence deeply influencing health outcomes. Additionally, a synergistic effect has been demonstrated also with socio-economic, cultural, and contextual determinants of health which seem to contribute to poorer health and accumulating social disadvantages. In this essay, using as a starting point the syndemic theory that translates the cumulative and intertwined factors between different epidemics, we argue that the SARS-CoV-2 is a one health issue of a syndemic nature and that the failure to acknowledge this contributes to weakened policy-making processes and public health responses and ineffective health policies and programs.

Keywords: COVID-19; Health in all policies; NCD, Non Communicable Diseases; NTD, Neglected Tropical Diseases.; One health; SARS-CoV-2; SDG, Sustainable Development Goals.; Syndemic.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1|
Fig. 1
Social, environmental and political determinants affect the syndemics of health and disease applied to the SARS-CoV-2 Syndemic.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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