Professional intervention in the health field in the context of pandemic

Abstract

In this essay we intend to share some reflections produced, in the middle of the year 2020, from our professional insertion in public-state health institutions of different levels of care in the city of Córdoba —Argentina—, which we organize in two axes: health and pandemic and intervention of Social Work in this context. Understanding health as a dynamic, social and historical process allows us to understand that the pandemic is expressed unequally in different populations, as well as the different ways of going through isolation and social-preventive-obligatory distancing. Therefore, we propose a situated reading of the pandemic from the field of Social Work. At the same time, health is approached as a right, which leads us, unfailingly, to think about what State and what public policies we need during and after the pandemic. Social Work is an actor that disputes the interpretation of health problems, the approach modalities and the place of the State in the care processes. Finally, it is necessary to install in health services and State institutions that talking about pandemic is much more than talking about the Covid-19 virus, being important to take up again the contributions of critical and community epidemiology in order to move from a clinical and hospital bioethics to a community bioethics.