MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2020) The World Health Organization (WHO) is deeply concerned about the threat of the vast spreading of COVID-19 in refugee camps, as their inhabitants are at a heightened risk due to the lack of sanitation and poor health conditions, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.
"Refugee are particularly at risk of COVID-19 because they often have limited access to adequate shelter, water, nutrition, sanitation and health services. Over 80 percent of the world's refugees and nearly all the world's internally displaced people are hosted in low and middle income countries. WHO is deeply concerned about the very real and present danger of widespread transmission of COVID-19 in refugee camps," Tedros said.
According to the WHO chief, the virus outbreak does not only pose health risks but also significantly affects refugees' livelihoods economically.
Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in turn, noted that COVID-19 had not been spreading widely in crowded refugee camps yet.
"Though we have not seen, or not seen yet, I should say, major outbreaks where we feared the most � in large concentration, in refugee camps traditionally, like in Bangladesh, for example � we've seen cases, we've seen some small outbreaks, but not the catastrophic outbreaks we were fearing at the beginning because of the lack of social distancing, the lack of water and sanitation facilities and so forth. I think that this is due to the fact that in many of these situations we have had time to prepare and there is where our cooperation with WHO has been invaluable," Grandi said.
The official stressed, however, that the majority of refugees and displaced persons lived not in camps, but in host communities, which have already been devastated by the pandemic. Grandi noted that most countries included refugees, displaced people and other "people on the move" in their national health response.
"The next campaign for inclusion will be tougher. It is inclusion in social and economic response. That will be more difficult to include refugees and displaced people. It will be more difficult economically because it costs a lot of money. It will be difficult politically in many countries. But I want to use this forum to appeal to states to think of that ... The pandemic will be an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the need to move away from the rhetoric of 'me first,' 'my country first' and to work together in a unanimous manner," he underlined.
According to data from the Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has surpassed 8.5 million, while the COVID-19 global death toll stands at 454,889.
