The global coronavirus pandemic has rocked whole societies
and ground economies to a halt across the world. In the UK, the
NHS is expected to be stretched far beyond its limit, businesses are closing down,
and people are being advised to self-isolate
to limit the spread. In a well-developed, well-prepared society like the
UK, such challenges are scary, but there is a good chance that if safety
precautions are followed the spread of the virus can be brought under control.
But we have already seen that COVID-19 has the capacity to cripple even
developed nations’ healthcare systems, such
as in Italy and China,
and developed nations across the world are taking increasingly draconian
measures to fight the greatest
public health crises in recent memory.
But if COVID-19 is capable of wreaking such havoc across
some the best-prepared nations on earth, then its impact on populations without
access to the services we take for granted will be exponentially greater.
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| Photo Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council. A Syrian boy poses for a picture during an awareness workshop on coronavirus (COVID-19) at a camp for displaced people in Atme town in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, near the border with Turkey. |
For instance, one of the worst affected nations currently is
Iran. The country is facing
near-total breakdown, with leaders dying, reports of mass burial pits for
victims of the coronavirus, and an unknown death toll that some warn could
eventually reach into the millions. Government
mismanagement of the response has been blamed, as has the unfortunate
timing of the virus arriving in the city of Qom during a mass Shia pilgrimage
to the site, which may have helped speed up the spread. But many others are
pointing to the severe limitations of Iran’s capacity to deal with the outbreak
due to the continued
US sanctions placed on the country. Due to the confusing nature of the
sanctions, certain exemptions for humanitarian imports are still not translating
into available materials for healthcare providers.
For
example, a sanction on paper material entering the country has resulted in
many doctors and nurses facing work without such basic equipment as facemasks. As
Human
Rights Watch pointed out in October, “while the US government has built
exemptions for humanitarian imports into its sanctions regime … in practice
these exemptions have failed to offset the strong reluctance of US and European
companies and banks to risk incurring sanctions and legal action by exporting
or financing exempted humanitarian goods.” The result, they conclude, “has been to deny
Iranians access to essential medicines and to impair their right to health.”
And Iran is not the only country struggling with sanctions
as it attempts to contain and delay COVID-19. Syria, too, has seen a
war-weakened health system further impeded by international sanctions.
Although, as with Iran, exemptions are made for humanitarian aid, in Syria’s
case an embargo on oil imports has
meant that ambulances have been left without fuel. Other countries with
weaker health systems than those in the west will undoubtedly suffer more
greatly. This is a political and economic crisis as much as a public health
one, and our actions with regard to each other will impact the outcome of our response.
However, citizens of poorer countries can still practice the
same self-isolation techniques as those of us in the UK. Other groups, such as
refugees and internally displaced persons’ do not have the luxury of locking
themselves away in homes. In Moria camp in Greece, for instance,
the threat of COVID-19 is looming large over the front-line doctors
working daily to support new arrivals in the overcrowded, underfunded camps. Medecins
sans Frontieres have called for an immediate evacuation of the camp,
highlighting that in some areas there is only one water tap for up to 1,300
residents, making widescale cross contamination almost inevitable. Since the
first confirmed case in Moria on the 13th March, the Greek
government has called a temporary suspension of non-state organisations
working in the camps, which MSF argues will lead to a much more severe crisis
in the coming weeks.
And even in the absence of government suspensions of
activity, humanitarian organisations are finding it harder and harder to do
their jobs as COVID-19 spreads around the globe. Jan Egeland, the head of the
Norwegian Refugee Council, himself currently in quarantine, highlighted the
difficulties of continuing to work in a context where many staff members are
sick and showing symptoms of the novel coronavirus, or are otherwise unable to
travel to their worksites, saying that the COVID-19 response should be “treated
like a warzone”. Agencies are scrambling to deliver public health services
in contexts of displacement and conflict to help slow the spread of coronavirus,
but they are also finding their ongoing activities hindered or halted entirely
due to the pandemic.
The World
Bank has now committed $14 billion to fighting COVID-19 in developing
countries, and particularly in supporting local private sector networks to
continue to work and keep supply chains moving in areas that require support to
keep hospitals and food markets open, but much more must be done to support the
most vulnerable populations in this time of crisis. Much like within the UK, we
must be aware that poor, elderly, immunocompromised, or isolated individuals
need greater support than the majority of us for whom coronavirus may just be a
severe flu, we must take a global perspective when planning our response to the crisis as a whole.
To stop a pandemic, everybody needs to be prepared. In the
same way that those of us currently stockpiling our own hand sanitiser, hand
soap, toilet paper, and other sanitary products are in fact increasing the risk
of the virus continuing to spread by leaving others without access to these
goods (what good is having five boxes of hand sanitiser if your neighbour and
colleague can’t get any and therefore they catch the virus and pass it onto you!?),
it is not enough to protect our own communities and nations. This is a global
pandemic, and it needs global solutions.
We are entering unprecedented times. The last major global
outbreak like this, during the 1918 Flu pandemic, took place in a very
different context, where the world was still much less interconnected than
today. A global population approaching 8 billion, with people living closer together,
with far more efficient road, rail, and air transport systems, working jobs
that often require international collaboration, has never before had to deal
with something as severe as COVID-19.
Unfortunately, the best treatment for COVID-19 appears to be
self-isolation. This may slow the spread of the virus,
but in the process of protecting ourselves we must continue to (figuratively!) embrace
our humanity and think of others. There is no Noah’s Ark to save just some of
us from the flood. Nor, do I believe, should we wish for that. Together, we are
more intelligent, more resilient, and more powerful than this virus.
Listen to advice, do what you can to help, be kind, reach
out to those who are isolated and vulnerable, and stay safe.
Find out how you can help during these difficult times here:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/dont-spread-coronavirus-misinformation.html
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