Medicine of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Swiss-Japanese Experiences of Epidemics and Pandemics
On August 6th, 2025, the Swiss Pavilion will host a series of panel sessions and a roundtable discussion titled “Medicine of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Swiss-Japanese Experiences of Epidemics and Pandemics”.
Covering a broad period from the late 19th-century rise of biomedicine to the present day, and with a prospective reflection of the major challenges to come, the event will inform, explain and exchange on the continuities and discontinuities in public health strategies with specialists of various disciplines (public health medicine, epidemiology, ethics, history, anthropology).
The global impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic has made the topic of epidemics universally relevant. People worldwide are interested in learning how different nations respond to health crises.
The event proposes to highlight the common points between Japan and Switzerland and their local specificities during epidemics and pandemics, as the two countries have a certain social and cultural proximity which provides an innovative understanding of experiencing infectious diseases in our modern societies.
Speakers: Murielle Bochud, Brenda Bogaert, Nolwenn Bühler, Ludovico Cobuccio, Pierre-Yves Donzé, Mariama Kaba, Hitoshi Oshitani, Akihito Suzuki, Chuangwei Zheng
Organizers: Mariama Kaba and Brenda Bogaert, Institute of Humanities in Medicine (Lausanne University Hospital CHUV & University of Lausanne), Switzerland
Overview and Registration
The event is public and will consist of two parts:
1) a series of panel sessions: 10:15am-4pm (JST)
2) a roundtable discussion: 4:30pm-7pm (JST)
To have access to the Swiss Pavilion on-site, please note that you will have to pay for your entry to the Osaka Expo 2025. No additional ticket is necessary to attend the event, but online registration is required. It is possible to attend part of the event or the whole day, in function of the space available. However the access is possible only in the 30 minutes before the beginning of each session.
The full programme and the registration form can be found here : https://event.swisspavilion.org/events/swissjapaneseexperiencesofepidemicsandpandemics/en
You can also follow the event online via this link: https://chuv.webex.com/meet/brenda.bogaert
Please note that the event will be held in English.
