UI COVID-19 Webinar 7: Initial Response to COVID-19: How did Eastern Europe get it right?

This Live-stream started at 14:00 (UK) on Thursday 7 May Speaker: Professor Igor Rudan, International Health and Molecular Medicine, The University of Edinburgh Abstract: In late January I started writing a popular science series “The Quarantine of Wuhan“ for about 30,000 followers on Facebook. I intended to address various aspects of the crisis as they were emerging. I tried to provide explanations in a way that would be easy to understand to very large crowds. I did this under the influence of the late professor Andrija Stampar, a 20th-century pioneer of international public health, who was also a Croatian. This giant of preventive medicine taught us that, in the fight against infectious diseases, “finding ways to inform population is more important than passing any laws” and that “a good epidemiologist and physician must be a teacher of the nation”. Croatia is also home to the world’s first quarantine, introduced by the city of Dubrovnik in 1377. My series was soon commissioned by Croatia’s leading newspaper, “Vecernji list”. The interest in the series became intense in six countries of the former Yugoslavia. As a result, my regular columns and short videos with key messages were spread through social networks. They gradually gained an audience of up to 3 million people. From early March I became the key government adviser for COVID-19 response for Croatia and remained heavily involved in the planning of the quarantine measures, hospital care, protection of retirement homes, and planning the exit. See all our COVID-19 webinar series at: