Inayat Ali

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Incharge/Assistant Professor at Fatima Jinnah Women University

This book centers on negotiations around cultural, governmental, and individual constructions of COVID-19. It considers how the coronavirus pandemic has been negotiated in different cultures and countries, with the final part of the volume focusing on South Asia and Pakistan in particular. The chapters include autoethnographic accounts and ethnogra...

Death is far from being simply a physiologic event; it is a complex phenomenon with sociocultural and politicoeconomic aspects. During extraordinary times such as the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, death becomes a contested site. I argue that the Pakistani government's dealings with the bodies of people who die from COVID-19 have shifted the meaning of...

Pregnancy and birth are biological phenomena that carry heavy cultural overlays, and pregnant and birthing women need care and attention during both ordinary and extraordinary times. Most Pakistani pregnant women now go to doctors and hospitals for their perinatal care. Yet traditional community midwives, called DāĪ in the singular and Dāyūn in the...

This book focuses on syndemics in the Global South and uses COVID‑19 as a window to understand clusters of disparities and disease comorbidities. The pandemic has exposed and multiplied structural inequalities and certain subpopulations were more exposed to COVID‑19 as well as experienced greater morbidity and mortality. The effects of the pandemic...

This book explores issues surrounding measles and vaccination in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it focuses on two major outbreaks in Sindh Province and on Pakistan’s vaccination campaigns. The chapters examine the responses to outbreaks and vaccination from various stakeholders including local people, the Pakistani government...

Manganese is essential for adequate feto-maternal health; however, an inverted U-shaped relation has been found between maternal manganese status and pregnancy complications. This systematic review summarizes the effect of maternal manganese exposure and perinatal health. We adopted a systematic approach to retrieve the recent literature. After app...

The human body has long been a focal point within sociocultural and political contexts, with particular emphasis on the female body and its multifaceted meanings, encompassing both visible and invisible boundaries. This is evident in the contemporary practice of virginity testing within the Bāgārrī community in the Sindh Province of Pakistan. In th...

In this autoethnographic account of my own transformative odyssey, via drawing on my personal experiences as a Pakistani anthropologist, I explore the pervasive impacts of English language hegemony in academia. Contextualizing this hegemony within the ongoing discussions on the possibility of “decolonizing anthropology,” I ask about the possibility...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused several impacts. Focusing on 360 participants (178 males, 182 females), this study explored the association between COVID-19 related distress, risk perception, stigma, and vaccine hesitancy and acceptance in the general population. Measures used included the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)...

Background Cultural sensitivity (CS) training is vital to pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) curricula. This study aimed to explore CS in Yale PEM fellows and emergency medicine (EM) residents at Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN) in Pakistan through distance simulation activities. Methods This mixed‐methods analysis of an educational interv...

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a multitude of complex emergencies, extending beyond the realm of health and healthcare. The situation presented a significant challenge to human security . The content analysis and literature review provide evidence of varied choices and decision-making processes at individual, local, national, and global levels i...

Menstruation is part of women’s normal life, which requires basic hygienic practices. Managing hygiene can be affected by several factors and situations such as natural disasters. Focusing on ‘super flooding’ in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, we pay attention to how this ‘natural disaster’ has affected hygienic practices of menstrual cycle of women. Th...

The transmission rate of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is significantly increasing in Pakistan, which amounts to the second most rapid spread in Asia. In early 2019, the media reported on a HIV outbreak in the Taluka (sub-district) of Ratodero, located in the Larkana district of Pakistan’s Sindh province...

Castillo and colleagues have described the curious case of Chile’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout that how Chile has revealed great success to vaccinate a greater population. Interestingly, there are several factors responsible for that success and a lesson learnt for many countries who are lagging in this regard. Building on these authors' arguments, I...

Various factors—including natural disasters and health emergencies—considerably affect vaccination programs. The reasons can be multiple. This is visible during the 2 years of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic causing COVID-19, which has overwhelmed the entire world and yet fearing its consecutive waves of various variants. With no exception, the si...

With multiple waves and variants, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected routine vaccination programs globally. Its impact is also visible in Pakistan as routine health services continue to be disrupted. Consequently, thousands of children have emerged as vulnerable in the face of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs), which ha...

In this article, I propose Kachaharī as an anthropologically useful and socio-culturally acceptable data collection method, which is similar to focus group discussions, yet differs in a particular way: the participants, not the researcher, drive the discussion. This cultural practice prevails in South Asia with some differences and similarities in...

Vaccine coverage for children is an important indicator of the performance of national health and immunization systems. Most of the existing literature has targeted mothers' low educational level, living in underserved districts and/or remote rural areas and economic poverty that are correlated with low immunization coverage but the supply- and dem...

A case of “pneumonia” in a Chinese tourist from unknown reasons was first reported in Sri Lanka on January 27, 2020. During the pandemic’s first wave, the government enforced a strict strategy for case detection by identifying contacts, implementing quarantine measures, imposing travel restrictions, and isolating small villages where the virus had...

As Schmid-Küpke and colleagues discuss the reasons behind cancelling the routine vaccination in Germany, the pandemic has affected all six World Health Organization Regions as around 56 countries suspended their mass vaccination campaigns during the first six months of the pandemic. The same happened in Pakistan. Consequently, there are great and v...

Trace elements are essentially required for various physiological and metabolic functions, and any disturbance in the trace elements homeostasis may result in the development of chronic diseases including breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer type reported in women equally affecting both the high-income and low-income countries....

This study aimed to describe the dealings of 20 biomedical doctors with coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Focusing on physicians from three different hospitals, we describe their challenges, emotions, and views concerning the pandemic. Many regarded the virus from a biomedical standpoint. Yet some also perceived i...

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic continues during 2021. Some countries are revisiting their containment measures to be eased or re-imposed after massive testing programs. Yet is testing itself a solution? Testing may be an important containment step, yet in low-income countries (LICs), it may be substantially challenging to carry out. This is because the...

Summarizes preliminary results of our project in pediatric emergency medicine training with online simulation between Yale University and Indus Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. We focused in the poster on cultural competence which was tested with a questionnaire and later addressed in focus groups. Cases for teaching had been adapted as well.

Enshrined in different conventions nationally and internationally, education is a fundamental right of every child irrespective of identity and location worldwide. Despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 and the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, education is not accessible and affordable for every...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2021.647294.].

By the mid of June 2021, after an almost 1.5-year-long COVID-19 pandemic that has significantly affected the world in multiple ways, various vaccines against COVID-19 have arrived and started worldwide. Yet, economic, (geo)political, and socio-cultural factors may influence its uptake at individual and country levels. Several issues will (and alrea...

Objective The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has received various distinct perspectives and responses at the local as well as global levels. The current study pays attention to local perspectives, which have appeared in the Sindh Province of Pakistan. Methods Given the constraints of the pandemic, and using convenience sampling, we conducted...

Zinc is an essential trace element involved in different physiological functions. During pregnancy, it plays a crucial role in healthy embryogenesis. This umbrella review, therefore, aimed to summarize the existing literature of meta-analyses evaluating the effect of maternal zinc supplementation or zinc status on maternal and neonatal outcomes. Tw...

Stories and narratives are part of our human sociocultural history, which are always preserved in what I call “societal memory.” We construct stories to weave meanings that help us make sense of our lifeworlds. Like stories, rumors and conspiracy theories can offer deep meanings when analyzed in specific contexts. Such narratives become most promin...

Vaccination encounters multiple context-specific challenges—socio-cultural, economic, and political—that substantially affect its uptake. Likewise, natural disasters and health emergencies considerably impact immunization endeavors, such as the coronaviurs 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has overwhelmed the entire world. It was already anticipated th...

Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglements among religion, science, and politics around CO...

This umbrella review summarizes the available meta-analyses elucidating the effects of maternal pesticide exposure on adverse health outcomes in children particularly the risk of childhood cancer. A literature search was conducted on PubMed and Scopus with 10-years temporal restriction and with search terms of (‘pesticides’) and (‘maternal’ or ‘pre...

Although coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic, it has several specificities influencing its outcomes due to the entwinement of several factors, which anthropologists have called "syndemics". Drawing upon Singer and Clair’s syndemics model, I focus on synergistic interaction among chronic kidney disease (CKD), diabetes, and COVID-19 in...

Food insecurity is a multifaceted phenomenon, which affects an individual's life right from the embryonic stage. Being a crucial factor, it substantially impacts the pregnancy phases, including aggravating stressful pregnancy events, by compromising the adequate quantity and quality of food. Focusing on low-income countries, this review aimed to ev...

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed multiple substantial challenges, affecting not only public health but also economic systems, socio-cultural patterns, and political institutions. Studies have focused on the relationships between complex emergencies and natural disasters with outbreaks of infectious diseases. However, there is a dearth of relevant li...

Since the coronavirus disease 2019, called COVID-19, has overwhelmed the high-income countries with ample resources and established healthcare system, we argue that there are plausible concerns why it may devastate the low-income countries like Pakistan. Focusing on Pakistan, we highlight the underlying reasons-e.g., demographic features, ineffecti...

Being a part of our sociocultural history, stories and narratives help us make sense of our lifeworlds. As stories, rumors, and conspiracy theories offer deep meanings when analyzed in specific contexts, which prominently appear in the face of looming uncertainties, anxieties, and fears. Similarly, many narratives have surrounded the COVID-19 pande...

In this article, we examine the impacts and effects of the words and terms now related to COVID-19 that have become globally pervasive in social discourse. Illustrating the ongoing interplay between words and politics, we demonstrate how terminologies may shape our interpretations of our experiences and affect the coping strategies we implement. Ou...

The COVID-19 pandemic has already exerted an enormous impact on the entire world. Everything is overwhelmed in the face of a rapid escalation of cases. The countries that have already reported the peak of transmission are easing their preventive measures yet fearing a second wave of infection. If the virus causes that next wave, are we sufficiently...

Micronutrients, as essential components of prenatal care, are important to reduce the risk for maternal and child morbidity and mortality by lowering pregnancy-related complications. The present study aimed to investigate the status of the trace elements, i.e., selenium, zinc, and manganese in pregnant and non-pregnant women from a developing count...

Objective: Maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) elimination in low-income countries is a major aim of public health endeavors, due to poor vaccination status, lack of antenatal care, and unhygienic birth practices. The objective of this study, thus, was to assess the present state and factors associated with maternal tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccination...

Birth related complications and comorbidities are highly associated with a poor nutritional status of pregnant women, whereas iron and iodine are among especially important trace elements for healthy maternal and fetal outcomes. The study compares the status of iron, iodine, and related functional parameters in pregnant and non-pregnant women from...