LatAm’s slums face losing battle vs Covid

RIO DE JANEIRO: As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, Latin America’s slum dwellers waited defenseless in its path. Now, with the region becoming the new epicenter of the crisis, the virus is unleashing destruction on its most vulnerable populations.

With limited sanitation and little space, millions of people living cheek by jowl in slums cannot take even the most basic handwashing and physical distancing precautions recommended by health authorities.

“We are increasingly concerned about the poor and other vulnerable groups more at risk from disease and death from the virus,” Pan American Health Organization chief Carissa Etienne said this week.

With infections continuing to climb in the pandemic’s new epicenter Brazil, as well as Peru and Chile, experts warn the situation is rapidly worsening.

In a region where an estimated 54 percent are employed in the informal sector, slum residents are forced to choose between “starving or dying from the virus,” according to Brazilian economist Dalia Maimon of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Maimon sums up the prevailing belief as: “if dying of hunger is a certainty, by not working — then I will take the risk of trying not to become infected by going out to work.”

An economic crisis exacerbated by the shutdown has left millions of Latin Americans without a livelihood. In Brazil alone, 5 million people lost their jobs since the pandemic began, the government said Thursday (Friday in Manila).