Refugee Camps Face COVID-19: 'If We Do Nothing, The Harm Is Going To Be So Extreme'
NPR spoke to humanitarian aid researcher Paul Spiegel about his analysis of conditions in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh — and the outlook for refugees everywhere as the coronavirus looms.
What will happen when COVID-19 hits refugee camps?
That's what Dr. Paul Spiegel and a team of researchers have been examining. They've been looking at how the coronavirus might affect the densely populated camps outside Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh — home to 850,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. As of Monday, there are 49 cases in the country, including one person in the town of Cox's Bazar.
The researchers will use the findings to make recommendations to the U.N. and global aid groups on how to deliver medical care and check the spread of coronavirus in similar refugee settings.
Spiegel, a former senior official at the U.N.
