Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to significant strain on front-line healthcare workers. Aims In this multicentre study, we compared the psychological outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in various countries in the Asia-Pacific region and identified factors associated with adverse psychological outcomes. Method From 29 April to 4 June 2020, the study recruited healthcare workers from major healthcare institutions in five countries in the Asia-Pacific region. A self-administrated survey that collected information on prior medical conditions, presence of symptoms, and scores on the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales and the Impact of Events Scale-Revised were used. The prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relating to COVID-19 was compared, and multivariable logistic regression identified independent factors associated with adverse psychological outcomes within each country. Results A total of 1146 participants from India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam were studied. Despite having the lowest volume of cases, Vietnam displayed the highest prevalence of PTSD. In contrast, Singapore reported the highest case volume, but had a lower prevalence of depression and anxiety. In the multivariable analysis, we found that non-medically trained personnel, the presence of physical symptoms and presence of prior medical conditions were independent predictors across the participating countries. Conclusions This study highlights that the varied prevalence of psychological adversity among healthcare workers is independent of the burden of COVID-19 cases within each country. Early psychological interventions may be beneficial for the vulnerable groups of healthcare workers with presence of physical symptoms, prior medical conditions and those who are not medically trained.

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The paper examines the emergence of a new landscape of international development finance that is blurring traditional boundaries between public and private resources for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other global public goods (GPGs). In the SDG financing ecosystem, private actors are no longer passive bystanders in the development process but as active contributors to and investors in development projects and programmes. The paper argues that the emerging ‘private turn’ in the architecture of development finance represents a technology of governance that is rooted in the assemblage of international development policy and practice. This regime constitutes an emerging complex and often problematic framework of organising and managing countries’ access to external finance and establishing their terms of engagement with the broader global economy.

As successors to structural adjustment programmes, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers

This paper aims to review and assess the contributions and limitations of law and development (L&D) as a field of legal scholarship in relation to the constitution of the international economy and global economic governance. It seeks to reflect on the theoretical and methodological contributions of L&D theory and practice on the development of international legal scholarship, particularly in the rapidly evolving field of international economic law. The intersections of economic theory, jurisprudence and legal theory and the institutional practice of development agencies and international economic organizations which are the focus of L&D scholarship provide a useful interdisciplinary prism through which developments in the regulatory framework of the global economy can be studied. Mapping the ways in which what Trubek and Santos call the three overlapping spheres of L&D – economic theory, legal theory and institutional practices – enables us to chart, understand and, where necessary, contest, the shifts in development theory and policy and institutional practice that influence and shape legal reform and scholarship.