I speak with Dr Rene Loewenson, a Zimbabwean epidemiologist and director of Training and Research Support Centre. After teaching for a decade at the University of Zimbabwe Medical school, she led a health department in the national trade union congress in the 1990s, worked with the African continental trade union body in health programmes and is a founder member of EQUINET (the Regional Network for Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa). She has since 1980 implemented research, participatory action research, policy analysis, training and negotiations on law and policy reform, and has led and contributed to various international consortia on equity in health, social determinants of health and health systems, on social participation in health, on policy change in family and child health and wellbeing and on public health law and practice. 

What do we know about COVID-19 spread in Africa? What don’t we know? Why don’t we know what we need to know? Who is being infected and where? What are the good examples of state responses to the pandemic? Why has violence been such a feature of state responses? Peoples’ responses – what can you tell us about organising in the time of COVID-19? Talk about EQUINET the excellent reports you’ve been producing on COVID-19.