Addressing COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: a call to action
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COMMENTARY
Open Access
Addressing COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: a call to action Jude Alawa1*, Nawara Alawa2*, Adam Coutts3, Richard Sullivan4, Kaveh Khoshnood5 and Fouad M. Fouad6*
Abstract Refugees and internally displaced persons in humanitarian settings are particularly susceptible to the spread of infectious illnesses such as COVID-19 due to overcrowding and inadequate access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. Countries facing conflict or humanitarian emergencies often have damaged or fragmented health systems and little to no capacity to test, isolate, and treat COVID-19 cases. Without a plan to address COVID-19 in humanitarian settings, host governments, aid agencies, and international organizations risk prolonging the spread of the virus across borders, threatening global health security, and devastating vulnerable populations. Stakeholders must coordinate a multifaceted response to address COVID-19 in humanitarian settings that incorporates appropriate communication of risks, sets forth resource-stratified guidelines for the use of limited testing, provides resources to treat affected patients, and engages displaced populations. Keywords: COVID-19, Refugees, Internally displaced persons, Humanitarian settings: WASH, Infectious disease
Background The COVID-19 outbreak has indiscriminately spread across the world, including in countries facing ongoing conflict, protracted humanitarian crises, and large numbers of forcibly displaced individuals. Countries experiencing humanitarian emergencies are particularly vulnerable to the spread of infectious diseases and have limited capacity to confront the challenges associated with containing the spread of COVID-19 and treating existing cases. Despite this reality, aid agencies, international actors, and donor governments have been slow to coordinate a multifaceted response, and few policies have been put forth to develop sufficient test-treatisolate capacity and to equip medical facilities and health personnel with the resources necessary to care for patients with COVID-19. Although the Global * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 1 Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA 2 Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA 6 Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19 sets forth an important strategic framework to address the virus, countries in humanitarian settings still face immense gaps in their capacity to implement proposed solutions [1]. Without further coordinated global assistance to support context-specific solutions in countries affected by humanitarian crises, there is considerable risk that COVID-19 will devastate vulnerable populations of displaced individuals, continue to spread across borders, and threaten global health security. This call-to-acti
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