COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: documenting and sharing context-specific programmatic experiences
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COMMENTARY
Open Access
COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: documenting and sharing context-specific programmatic experiences Neha S. Singh1, Orit Abrahim2, Chiara Altare2, Karl Blanchet3, Caroline Favas1, Alex Odlum3 and Paul B. Spiegel2*
Abstract Humanitarian organizations have developed innovative and context specific interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as guidance has been normative in nature and most are not humanitarian specific. In April 2020, three universities developed a COVID-19 humanitarian-specific website (www.covid19humanitarian.com) to allow humanitarians from the field to upload their experiences or be interviewed by academics to share their creative responses adapted to their specific country challenges in a standardised manner. These field experiences are reviewed by the three universities together with various guidance documents and uploaded to the website using an operational framework. The website currently hosts 135 guidance documents developed by 65 different organizations, and 65 field experiences shared by 29 organizations from 27 countries covering 38 thematic areas. Examples of challenges and innovative solutions from humanitarian settings are provided for triage and sexual and gender-based violence. Offering open access resources on a neutral platform by academics can provide a space for constructive dialogue among humanitarians at the country, regional and global levels, allowing humanitarian actors at the country level to have a strong and central voice. We believe that this neutral and openly accessible platform can serve as an example for future large-scale emergencies and epidemics. Keywords: COVID-19, Humanitarian, Refugee, Conflict, Crisis, Platform
Background As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world, its negative effects among persons affected by humanitarian emergencies are becoming increasingly apparent. High population density, limited access to preventative and curative health services, poor water, sanitation and hygiene services, poor governance, distrust of authorities, and increasing stigma and discrimination are among the many risk factors that make the prevention and management of COVID-19 particularly challenging in such settings [1]. These include conflictaffected countries such as South Sudan, Yemen and * Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Center for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Syria, and forced displacement settings such as refugees in Bangladesh and Lebanon and internally displaced persons in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 and the response to control its spread in these environments are currently under-documented and underresearched [2–4]. COVID-19 guidance primarily focuses on high income countries, that have become the epicentre of the pandemic, and thus far has often not necessarily been as relevant or applicable to humanitarian set
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