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Business Daily

Coronavirus in confinement

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

While much of the world is trying to practice social distance, people in confinement have little option to do so. We take a look at the famously overcrowded prisons in Uganda. Doreen Namyalo Kyazze, Africa Programme Manager at Penal Reform International, says the Uganda prison service are not doing anything to contain the virus while a spokesperson for the service says they’re doing all they can. There’s also the tens of millions of refugees and displaced people around the world, many in confinement. Dr. Siyana Mahroof-Shaffi is a healthcare practitioner working in the Moria detention centre on the Greek island of Lesbos. She says the consequences of an outbreak in the camp are unimaginable. And Dr. Josiah Rich, professor of epidemiology at Brown University and prison physician, explains why those who think we don’t need to worry about prisoners are wrong. Producer: Frey Lindsay. (Picture: a group of asylum seekers at the Moria detention centre. Picture credit: Getty images.)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, what a coronavirus outbreak might mean in one of the world's most crowded refugee camps.

0:11.8

It's going to spread incredibly quickly. It is absolutely my worst nightmare to think that we have allowed COVID to enter the camp.

0:21.7

And what about the world's 11 million convicts who are trapped in overcrowded prisons at the

0:26.9

moment? At a time of crisis, why should we care about them?

0:30.6

Whatever you feel about prisoners, the fact of the matter is the people we know who are at

0:35.2

higher risk are more likely to end up on a ventilator in a hospital

0:40.4

taking up space that we can ill afford right now.

0:43.5

That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

1:04.5

Some people are the... Some devotional singing there in a packed prison in the town of Lira in northern Uganda.

1:13.6

I visited this facility a couple of years back,

1:17.8

and it should be said that not much has changed in places like this since then.

1:21.2

So I'm standing here in a giant courtyard.

1:22.9

There are a couple of trees above me.

1:24.3

The sun is beating down.

1:31.2

It's another hot morning here in Uganda. And around me are maybe two or 300 prisoners dressed in yellow. The uniform they have to wear. And they're sitting under

1:37.9

the trees, those who can find the shade. I'm told here that you can't sleep because there is so little space.

1:47.8

This prison is three times overcrowded like so many of the prisons in Uganda

1:51.4

and they all have to sleep back to back side to side.

1:55.8

Even to roll over means the entire cell has to move at the same time.

2:01.7

It is devastating. It is, it is inhuman, and I don't know, really.

2:08.5

It is really such a devastating scenario. It's not good at all.

2:13.2

That's the voice of Isaac. He's one inmate in Lira prison. When I met him, he'd been on remand for more than three years for a crime that he said he hadn't committed.

...

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