295 - The Impact of COVID-19 on Refugees and People in Conflict Zones

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.6 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a lack of data around COVID-19 in humanitarian settings and refugee camps so it's difficult to know how people there have fared in the pandemic. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health, talks with Stephanie Desmon about the data vacuum and the importance of vaccinating all who are at high risk of severe COVID. They also discuss how humanitarian assistance has fared since the pandemic cut off many aid zones from international funds and resources, leaving local and national NGOs to fill the gap.

KEYWORDS: vaccine distribution; international health; healthcare infrastructure

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
0:12.3	I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
0:19.6	Our goal is to bring scientific evidence
0:22.4	and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists,
0:27.8	community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas
0:34.4	or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question
0:38.8	at jh.edu.
0:40.5	That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:46.6	Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call.
0:50.7	Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Paul Spiegel, who directs the Johns Hopkins
0:55.8	Center for Humanitarian Health, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted refugees and others in
1:02.3	conflict zones and what lessons have been learned. Let's listen. Paul Spiegel, thanks so much for
1:08.2	joining me. It's a pleasure, Stephanie. Today I'd like to talk to you about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugees and people
1:16.6	who live in conflict zones.
1:18.6	Can you give an overview of how this has impacted those folks?
1:23.1	Certainly.
1:24.6	The short and sweet answer is that we sadly do not have enough good quality data to have a comprehensive or quality answer.
1:34.4	But I can say at the beginning, we had expected that there would be a significant amount of transmission,
1:43.6	particularly in camp-like settings where there's a high population density.
1:48.5	So we expected a lot of transmission and consequently high hospitalization and bad occupancy rates and high death rates.
1:58.7	Although we did recognize that given the demographics of the population,
2:03.2	they're in refugee or IDP internally displaced person settings,
	...

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