Day: December 29, 2021

Roughly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, no massive outbreaks have been reported in refugee camps to date. Health experts have some theories about why, but they also urge continued wariness against “the very real and present danger of widespread transmission” in camps, as the World Health Organization has cautioned.

The U.N. refugee agency, or UNHCR, “had been fearing — and preparing for — large outbreaks at refugee camps, which fortunately did not happen,” spokeswoman Aikaterini Kitidi acknowledged in an email exchange with VOA.

“However, this doesn’t mean we are out of the woods yet,” she said. With new variants such as omicron, “which are far more infectious, we may very well see more cases. We must remain vigilant and scale up surveillance and testing, as well as the equitable distribution of vaccines.”

UNHCR estimates that roughly 80 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced by persecution and conflict, with most living in low-resource countries with frail health systems. Millions of them live in camps — some formal, some informal — with limited water and sanitation facilities. They also face overcrowding, making social distancing a challenge.

Yet comparatively few COVID infections have been reported in the camps: 55 Central African refugees tested positive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, as UNHCR reported in a global COVID-19 response update of December 20.

Because of population density, “early on, we were concerned that [COVID-19] transmission would be very high and so would deaths, even with the younger demographics” of refugee camps, said Paul Spiegel, an epidemiologist who directs Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Humanitarian Health. “That hasn’t been the case that we’re aware of — but then data have been very poor.”

Undercounting is a real possibility, Spiegel said. “There could be scenarios where it [COVID] actually has gone through the refugee camps at a high level” but symptoms weren’t severe enough for the infected people to seek care. He added that there hasn’t been enough blood testing “to know the extent that COVID has actually been transmitted in these settings. … It takes a lot of time and money to be able to do this.”

Individual circumstances

Transmission rates ultimately may vary depending on the individual camp or other setting, said Spiegel, a former UNHCR senior official who has responded to crises in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia. He was on a team that, early in the pandemic, advised the United Nations, governments and humanitarian groups on best responses.

In early December, Spiegel completed five weeks of touring and assessing health conditions in Afghanistan for the World Health Organization. In that country, he said, only three of 39 facilities intended for treating COVID were functioning; the rest were devoid of supplies or paid staff following the Taliban takeover in August and subsequent sanctions by the United States and other Western allies. Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would lift restrictions on some humanitarian aid.

On behalf of UNHCR, Spiegel also is looking at COVID’s impact on two Syrian refugee camps in Jordan: Za’atari, a northern site with nearly 80,000 residents, and Azraq, a northeastern site hosting 38,000. Preliminary data indicate lower rates of infection and death in those two camps than among residents of surrounding areas, he said.

“So why would that be? We have some hypotheses,” Spiegel said, noting that those camps went into lockdown early, restricting refugees to the camp, limiting outsiders’ access, and promoting more handwashing and social distancing. Local and international NGOs sustained their support for the camps, he said, so residents could continue to access health care and food, “even if it’s not enough” to meet their caloric needs. He also noted that people in camps spend a lot of time outside.

Spiegel said he’s involved in additional studies of refugees and host communities in Bangladesh and in three African countries: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. He said he anticipated their findings to be published in 2022.

Source: Voice of America

Low vaccination rates are of mounting concern amid a new wave of COVID-19 infections in Africa, where nearly 227,000 deaths have been reported, according to the Africa CDC’s COVID-19 dashboard. Only 20 African countries had vaccinated at least 10% of their populations as of mid-December, according to the United Nations.

Vaccine access is a major stumbling block.

Vaccines have been slow to arrive from wealthier countries; when they do, there may not be sufficient infrastructure to support timely distribution. On December 22, Nigeria’s government destroyed more than 1 million doses of donated AstraZeneca vaccine that authorities said could not be used before the expiration date.

Meanwhile, the African Union and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are pushing efforts to develop vaccine manufacturing on the continent.

But, “even in countries where vaccines are being rolled out, there might be administrative and other obstacles that prevent refugees from being vaccinated,” said Aikaterini Kitidi, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee Agency, or UNHCR.

Some countries “require identity documents, which refugees often do not have,” she added. “Others have set up online [registration] systems that can deter or prevent people without access to the internet or who are not computer literate.”

Awareness

Another challenge is misinformation.

It’s “heavily impacting the vaccination process and hindering people from coming,” said Dr. Martin Kalibuze, who directs the vaccination program in Uvira refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu province. “There are a lot of rumors, like ‘people are going to die from vaccination, women are going to turn infertile.'”

Sifa Akimana, a 28-year-old Burundian refugee living in the DRC’s Kavimvira transit center with her two babies, told VOA’s Central Africa service she was opposed to getting inoculated because “I hear from people that if you’re vaccinated, it’s very dangerous. It’s a way to control people’s movements with their detective machines.”

Kalibuze said any vaccination drive first needs a strong awareness campaign to smooth the way.

Priorities

There’s at least one more impediment to COVID vaccination: competing priorities.

Across Africa and elsewhere, especially in zones with displaced people, “ministries of health have so many different crises that they have to tackle that COVID isn’t always on the top of their list,” said Jason Straziuso, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

For instance, he said, they might decide it’s wiser to invest in more mosquito nets to protect against malaria, a historically deadly disease that the WHO estimates killed 627,000 people in 2020 alone, mostly young African children.

The ICRC doesn’t distribute vaccines on its own but instead partners with health ministries and national Red Cross Societies, Straziuso said, noting it depends on those relationships “to move into contested areas and to carry out vaccination campaigns.”

Straziuso said the organization hopes to “do a lot more in 2022” to aid vulnerable people, including refugees and the displaced. “There’s just millions of people who don’t have access to these vaccines,” he said. “So, it’s a slow and long process.”

Source: Voice of America