COVID-19 PANDEMIC: SOME MEDICAL-SOCIOLOGICAL, SOCIAL-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Slavko Sasajkovski Ph.D. Full professor /The Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research, “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is an extremely provocative and challenging topic for a wide range of multidisciplinary research. Including research in the fields of medical sociology, social epidemiology and political epidemiology. Areas that in our Republic are rather neglected. In any case, unjustified. This statement certainly applies and to medical sociology, as a separate sociology in relation to general sociology. The COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale has aroused very strong interest in its study from the scientific position of medical sociology, most often in community, i. e. as a truly multidisciplinary approach, and with some close special sociology, but also in multidisciplinary community with other scientific fields. Including epidemiology, i. e. social epidemiology and political epidemiology. In our country, a very small number of sociologists, through their research interest and engagement, are direct and specialize (and) in different types of research in the field of medical sociology. Medical sociology as a special sociology is also called as sociology of medicine, sociology of health and diseases… In this text, as a combined approach from the sides of medical sociology, social epidemiology and political epidemiology, several selected aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be research-analytically “illuminated”. Among other things, the aspects of the definition of health and disease, as basic notions in the field of medical sociology, then, the aspects of the treatment of public health, infectious diseases and the medical fields that deal with them, means the areas of preventive and preclinical medicine in terms of clinical medicine, the phenomenon of risk balancing and some others.

Key words: Pandemic KOVID-19; Medical Sociology, Social Epidemiology, Political Epidemiology; Health and disease; Public Health Systems; Risks balancing.