Save the Children: Remember the Millions of refugee and displaced children in overcrowded camps as Coronavirus spreads
globally
Source: Save the Children
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Vulnerable children and their families living in informal settlements such as refugee and displacement camps cannot be
forgotten as the world tightens restrictions in a battle to contain the coronavirus outbreak, Save the Children is
warning.
Around the world there are more than 12 million child refugees and globally some 70 million people have been forced to
flee from their homes, many of whom are currently living in overcrowded conditions with limited or no access to
healthcare. Refugees and forcibly displaced children are already vulnerable to infectious diseases in a number of ways,
including through having reduced access to healthcare, water and sanitation systems and having potentially weakened
immune systems.
Some response measures currently being adopted by governments, such as self-isolation, are extremely challenging within
overcrowded displacement camps. In Idlib, Syria, where conflict has forced nearly a million people to flee into inhumane
living conditions in camps stretched far beyond capacity, self-isolation would be practically impossible during an
outbreak of coronavirus with potentially devastating consequences for families living through the tenth year of the
Syrian conflict.
In Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, home to the largest refugee settlement in the world, there is currently no system in place
to screen or test for Covid-19 and there are no intensive care units for the nearly one million refugees, half of whom
are children. With freedom of movement severely restricted and cramped conditions also compromising people’s ability to
self-isolate, the virus could prove catastrophic.
Dr Shamim Jahan, Deputy Country Director for Save the Children in Bangladesh, said:
"Even though at present there are no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Cox’s Bazar, we’ve kept an isolation unit with 15
beds in our primary healthcare centre in one of the camps specifically for isolation as needed. If Covid-19 should
spread widely, we’d still be able to keep running our primary healthcare centre alongside the isolation unit which is
crucial to saving lives but there is a risk we could become overwhelmed. The centre normally treats children for
pneumonia and offers pregnant women with vital maternal healthcare services."
In Sub-Saharan Africa, which hosts more than a quarter of the world’s refugee population, cases are rapidly being
confirmed across the majority of countries. With just 0.2 doctors per 1000 people, it’s the region with the fewest
number of medical professionals per capita in the world, putting both refugees and host communities at risk as the virus
spreads. By contrast, East Asia and the Pacific, where the vast majority of confirmed cases of Covid-19 have occurred,
has 1.6 doctors per 1000 people. Save the Children is calling on donors to strengthen support to health systems in East
and Southern Africa to ensure that vital health services are not diverted from communities who are already battling
deadly diseases and health issues such as malnutrition.
Save the Children runs major sanitation and hygiene programs across the globe and is working with health teams on the
ground to roll out Covid-19 prevention messages like handwashing and self-isolation. These actions will ultimately
support children's ability to prevent infection and resilience to overcome it if they become ill, but more support is
needed to bring these actions to scale.
Dr Zaeem Haq, Save the Children’s Global Medical Director, said:
"Covid-19 is a global health crisis which requires a coordinated global response. It is in all of our interests to
ensure we are doing everything to prevent further spread of the virus and this is especially significant in refugee and
displacement camps where isolation and testing pose significant challenges. Children already bear the burden of many of
the world’s infectious diseases including pneumonia, malaria and cholera and families already struggle to get adequate
health care."
Save the Children is calling on international donors and national governments to scale up investment in health systems
to allow countries to respond to the outbreak without compromising other health services, and to roll out communications
campaigns within refugee populations to stop new infections from occurring. Our teams across the world are preparing for
potential outbreaks in countries with weakened health systems, fragile contexts or a limited capacity to respond due to
other ongoing crises, such as conflict or natural disasters.