Themes (Refugee Families, Refugee Camps, and Covid-19 Pandemic)
Over seventy million individuals worldwide have compelled by conflicts, human rights violations, violence, and persecution to leave their homes. Among those, over 29 million become refugees, of whom eighty-four percent proceed to be hosted by middle or low-income countries with weaker water, sanitation, and health systems. Most nations affected by instability or war/conflict tend to have porous borders, with economic migrants and refugees among other populations frequently accessing them via informal routes. These nations may experience a challenging time for the people who enter and leave their territory. Some of the refugees who flee their home countries for various reasons migrate as families and mostly end up in refugee camps. In these camps, these people have limited access to healthcare, and hence they are vulnerable to disease, most notably to infectious diseases like coronavirus (Bowman, 2020). This paper brings together the themes of families/communities, camps, and diseases to discuss refugees.
During this period, when the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the world, refugees are particularly susceptible to the epidemic and other illnesses. This is because of high geographical movement, staying in a congested environment, poor sanitation, as well as lacking access to proper healthcare or vaccination programs. Refugee communities are mostly ignored during disaster and pandemic preparedness planning, even when a country is stable enough to cater for their needs. They are also the first people to be stigmatized and are mostly wrongly held responsible for spreading viruses, such as coronavirus. For instance, we have witnessed various populist politicians in Europe railing against immigration and even tried to create a clear connection between refugees and immigrants and the Covid-19 pandemic. This is despite the lack of any evidence to back this up (Vaughan, 2020)
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to take a toll on many countries in the world, refugees continue to face the most significant threat of infections generally because it is challenging to observe the safety guidelines in such an environment. The risk is significantly higher in war-torn nations, such as Iran in the Middle East and Yemen. Displaced families in such countries have to move into camps at least to have access to basic needs as they hope for things to get better. These refugee families include the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, children, pregnant and nursing women who require better living conditions than those found in the camps, especially during the wave of coronavirus. This leaves them exposed to coronavirus and other infectious diseases (Bowman, 2020).
The increased threat for displaced individuals does not only exist in war-torn nations. For refugees living refugee camps in more stable nations are also faced with challenges in fighting Covid-19, including the barrier to treatment, or even a possible vaccination. In Lebanon, a country that hosts over 1.5 million refugees from Syria, there are concerns that the highly-privatized nature of their system of healthcare poses a risk to the refugees. In the US, there is still no assurance that the general public would be able to afford the vaccine. The guarantee for access to medication and vaccination is an urgent humanitarian concern that is vital to universal healthcare as a whole (Bowman, 2020).
On the issue of sanitation, refugees in various camps have limited access to water with worse situations like many refugees sharing a single tap to clean their hands. We all know the key to preventing the spread of coronavirus is frequent and thorough hand washing. With these conditions, even keeping a social distance is an issue due to the congestion in these camps. Families living in these camps have to bear with the deplorable conditions, which make it almost impossible to control the spread of coronavirus. The standards at refugee camps, as noted by organizations that respond to humanitarian crises, were basically not well planned to manage a global pandemic like Covid-19. Families living among the refugee communities are already exposed to malnutrition issues and illnesses like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. This is because they lack any access to basic healthcare services, leave alone specialized healthcare (Iacobucci, 2020).
When we look at refugee camps around the world, the question still remains whether these communities/families deserve to live in such vulnerable conditions. For instance, let us take a look at Moria camp, which exists in Lesbos, Greek, this facility was designed to host 3,000 individuals. However, now almost 20,000 people are living in that camp. This means that over 300 individuals share a single water tap, 160 of them share a toilet, and more than 500 individuals use a single shower (Hargreaves et al., 2020). Unbelievable, right? This is the situation that faces the majority of these world’s most vulnerable populations. As mentioned earlier, women face the biggest risk during emergencies or pandemics like Covid-19 since they conduct the majority of the care and, therefore, they are more susceptible to exposure to coronavirus (Iacobucci, 2020). Another issue is that families have to bear with the conditions in refugee camps because there is nowhere to run to as networks are closed, and there are little or no opportunities out there for anyone who would like to start life afresh. Right now, things are almost at a standstill in most areas of the globe. Hence, what can be done for now is to improve the conditions at refugee camps to help curb coronavirus spread. These communities need as much help and support as they can get during this difficult time.
References
Bowman, B. (2020, April). As Coronavirus Spreads, Experts Warn Refugees Are Particularly Vulnerable. From: https://theglobepost.com/2020/02/28/coronavirus-outbreak-refugees/
Hargreaves, S., Zenner, D., Wickramage, K., Deal, A., & Hayward, S. E. (2020). Targeting COVID-19 interventions towards migrants in humanitarian settings. The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Iacobucci, G. (2020). Covid-19: Doctors warn of humanitarian catastrophe at Europe’s largest refugee camp.
Vaughan, A. (2020). An uneven pandemic.