Fears refugee crisis will fuel second outbreak
Conflict is driving millions from their homes and few have been tested
There are more than 70 million people worldwide who have been driven from their homes by war and unrest, up to 10 million are packed into refugee camps and informal settlements, and almost none have been tested for the coronavirus.
While the relative isolation of many camps may have slowed the virus’ spread, none is hermetically sealed. Without testing, the virus can spread unchecked until people start showing symptoms. If it does, there will be few if any intensive care beds or ventilators. There might not even be gloves or masks.
“Testing is in short supply even in New York and Norway, but it is nonexistent in most of the countries in the [global] south for the people we try to help,” Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
His group recently conducted a review of all 30 countries where it operates and found virtually no testing before people became sick.
“If it’s killing people daily in America, then what do you think will happen to us?” asked Mariam Abdi, a vegetable vendor in Kenya’s Dadaab camp, where 217,000 people live in endless rows of tents. “We will all perish.”
In many camps, cramped conditions and poor infrastructure can make it impossible to practice social distancing and frequent handwashing. Western countries, which by then may have contained their own outbreaks, will have to reckon with the fact that if the virus finds refuge among the world’s most vulnerable, it could return anytime.
‘Miracle’ no cases found
The coronavirus has already appeared in Syria, where the decadelong civil war has displaced more than half of the population of 23 million. At least 350 health facilities have been bombed, mostly by the government. More than 900 medical staff have been killed and countless more have fled. But no cases have been reported yet in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, where a government offensive displaced nearly a million people earlier this year and where authorities have carried out around 200 tests.
Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian physician based in
Chicago who heads MedGlobal, an international health NGO, calls that a “miracle” and says an outbreak there would be “catastrophic.”
‘No doctors can save us’
There’s been little if any testing in Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, where more than a million members of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority are packed into the world’s largest refugee camp.
Kate White, the emergency medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said there is “very limited testing capacity” in Bangladesh, and most is in the capital.
While cases have been reported in the district, none have been detected inside the camp.
Sakina Khatun, who lives with her husband and seven children in a small bamboo and tarp hut, said “the virus will kill everything it touches” if it enters the camps. “No doctors can save us then.”
‘It will certainly come back’
There’s a similar sense of foreboding in conflict zones across
Africa. In Burkina Faso, 800,000 people have fled attacks by jihadis in recent months. Aguirata Maiga says soap is so expensive for her that she has to choose between washing her children’s hands and their clothes.
The country’s fragile health system has only 60 intensive care beds and a handful of ventilators, for a population of around 20 million.
In Kenya’s crowded Kakuma refugee camp, more than 190,000 refugees live in tents and rely on 19 wells.
There is no coronavirus testing at Kakuma or Dadaab, said the IRC’s Kenya health coordinator, John Kiogora. There are no intensive care units or ventilators, either.
“If the coronavirus is spread from Europe, via Turkey, to Idlib, and gains a stronghold there, it will certainly come back to Europe,” said Egeland.