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This article examines the impact of floods on agriculture in Bangladesh and argues that, although severe inundation destroys crops in the monsoon flood months, monsoon floods act as an open-access resource in supplying irrigational input to agriculture. District-level rice and jute productivity data for the period 1978-2000 are analyzed to investigate the long-term impacts of floods in terms of agricultural performance, comparing “more” flood-prone districts with “less” flood-prone districts. In addition, the short-term impacts of floods are analyzed on crops grown in the flood months and in subsequent, post-flood months. The results show that the area under cultivation and agricultural productivity are higher in the “more” flood-prone districts of Bangladesh. They also show that, while yield rates decline when floods assume “extreme” proportions, productivity increases during “normal” floods and in the post-flood months.

Objectives The role of medical students in the current COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly evolving. The aim of this review is to explore the involvement of medical students in past global health emergencies, to help inform current and future scenarios. Methods A rapid systematic review was undertaken, including articles from online databases discussing the roles, willingness and appropriateness of medical student involvement in global health emergencies. Data were extracted, appraised and written up as a narrative synthesis. This paper was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020177231). Results 28 articles were included. Medical students played a wide variety of clinical and non-clinical roles including education and logistics, although medical assistance was the most commonly reported role. Challenges included a lack of preparedness and negative mental health impacts. 91.7% of included articles about willingness found medical students were more willing to be involved than not. Conclusion This review shows medical students are capable and willing to be involved in global health emergencies. However, there should be clear protocols for the roles that they play, taking into account the appropriateness. As a rapid review, there were study limitations and more research is required regarding the impact of these roles on medical students and the system.

BackgroundCancer screening uptake is known to be low among South Asian residents of Ontario. The objective of this pilot study was to determine if lay health educators embedded within the practices of primary care providers could improve willingness to screen and cancer screening uptake for South Asian patients taking a quality improvement approach.Materials and methodsParticipating physicians selected quality improvement initiatives to use within their offices that they felt could increase willingness to screen and cancer screening uptake. They implemented initiatives, adapting as necessary, for six months.ResultsFour primary care physicians participated in the study. All approximated that at least 60% of their patients were of South Asian ethnicity. All physicians chose to work with a preexisting lay health educator program geared toward South Asians. Health ambassadors spoke to patients in the office and telephoned patients. For all physicians, ~60% of South Asian patients who were overdue for cancer screening and who spoke directly to health ambassadors stated they were willing to be screened. One physician was able to track actual screening among contacted patients and found that screening uptake was relatively high: from 29.2% (colorectal cancer) to 44.6% (breast cancer) of patients came in for screening within six months of the first phone calls. Although physicians viewed the health ambassadors positively, they found the study to be time intensive and resource intensive, especially as this work was additional to usual clinical duties.DiscussionUsing South Asian lay health educators embedded within primary care practices to telephone patients in their own languages showed promise in this study to increase awareness about willingness to screen and cancer screening uptake, but it was also time intensive and resource intensive with numerous challenges. Future quality improvement efforts should further develop the phone call invitation process, as well as explore how to provide infrastructure for lay health educator training and time.

The severe economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global working population can be interpreted as both a fallout from, and a violent assertion of, a larger crisis in the world of work. While this crisis has been attributed to the pre-existing conditions of widespread informality and precarity in the domain of remunerative work, the authors of this article dig deeper to read these conditions and the crisis tendencies as articulations of certain key contradictions that define the world of work in the present conjuncture of global capitalism. The article highlights three specific contradictions: that between capital and labour in the 'interior' space of capital; that between capital and its 'outside'; and those emerging from 'dispersion' of the circuit of capital to its 'outside'. The 'outside' is the economic space that exists within the capitalist social formation but represents the domain of unwaged work carried out in the processes of non-capitalist production and distribution, both within and outside the space of the household. The authors argue that the expanded reproduction of capital has sharpened this triad of contradictions in the present conjuncture in specific ways in the global South and the global North through continuous informalization of work, exclusion of masses of population from the 'interior' domain of capital, and insistent dispersion of the circuit of capital to its 'outside' through various forms of 'non-standard' labour processes and work arrangements. The article provides some illustrations of how these processes have registered and contributed to the crisis situation in the times of the pandemic. PANDEMIC, CRISIS AND CONDITIONS OF INFORMALITYThe expression 'crisis' is often used in popular discourse and scholarly imaginations to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the All authors have contributed equally to this work. We thank the editor of this Forum issue and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on various drafts of the article.