Any thoughts on why this predicted crisis in refugee camps or the third world?

[Legoandloldolls]

Just that really. India seems to be doing well and Africa.

Refuge camps dont seem to have huge problems either. Could it be under reporting, cover up and just bigger populations of young healthy men?

It's good news ( if its true) but also sad that comparatively for a Rick country we have the fifth highest deaths rate and even we are under reporting massively.

What's going on? Why is the west the worst hit bit by a mile? I cant see it being a time lag. That wouldn't make sense

Underreporting sounds most likely. Also lack of facilities/access to hospitals.

A younger population would also be a factor, we've got an aging population in the west.

It's just really hard to compare the corona impact in different countries as they have different criteria for tallying up the numbers of sick people and deaths, and also they don't all do as many tests. For exemple the US has the highest tally but :

• they also performed by far the most tests

• their obesity rate is through the roof

• lack of social assistance means it's harder to isolate

Mumsnetters always tend to have a fairly colonialist attitude to "India and Africa". Exemplified by the British Exceptionalism of Jenny Harries. Many of these countries have far more experience in handling infectious disease epidemics than the UK or other western countries do. Plus they followed WHO advice at a time when the UK was mocking it as only for poor countries.

It hasn't been the "third world" for years. Developing countries is the term you want. And it's not just semantics.

Sky news have just published an article about millions starving in India due to lack of work and food as a result of Covid. Not sure that's 'doing really well.'

India cracked down hard and early.

Looking at, for example, a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey:
Very little travel in and out. Very few visitors to the Turkish-Syrian border area. Syrians making their way to the camp very unlikely to have been exposed within Syria. The main risk would be with people staffing the camps.

Of course, there may well be under reporting. Many African countries can definitely not afford widespread testing. But again, in general, sub-saharan Africa is not exactly a tourism hotspot, and the better-off countries in Africa who have more travel in and out (Kenya, SA etc) seem to have taken effective early action like mandatory quarantine for travellers etc.

Some countries are underreporting (including the U.K.), sone are outright ignoring it. Others have instigated strict measures despite knowing that this will kill more people than a coronavirus epidemic. I saw a terrible interview with a Nigerian educators and women’s rights activist who pointed out that the lockdown measures would result in children starving to death but the government was more concerned about looking good. Police in these kinds of countries also don’t have to adhere to strict human rights requirements which is also handy in preventing a spread of the disease. A relative sent me a video from India of the police beating anyone who was out for example.

The thing you have to understand is that you can only trust statistic from countries with high testing rates and good contact tracing methods. The U.K. isn’t one of them, can’t think of any developing countries that make the list either (although of course I’m not saying that there aren’t, I’m not an expert on every countries statistics).

I think bc deaths disproportionally affect the elderly, and we have more of them.

*poorer countries in sub-saharan Africa, I meant to say!

I don't imagine many in the refugee camps are going on skiing holidays, which is how it spread to some countries, but it has started in the camps and is likely to be a disaster.

So why the mass hysteria about the townships in South Africa? Are they well cared for in reality? It's one continent that I have wanted to travel too ( black south African friends stories) but she did move to the UK 20 years ago maybe it's a safe place now. I do t know. I only the news to go on. Sky was saying it was going to be a humanitarian disaster in the townships. Maybe it's a nice place to live?
Re India again there was masses of people waiting to leave in Deli. I do know first hand India is a country of two halves. Great health care cant stop it spreading via mass gatherings. It can only help cure. We arent seeing high numbers of infection or deaths.

Maybe our big Charlie events here like comic relief etc needs to be directed to our care homes in the UK?

Ver few people travel in and out of refugee camps, maybe a volunteer might fly over and take it with them but can’t see that there is much international traffic at the moment.
Poorer countries have much less travel, people to tend to stay within thier town/village so much less mixing.
Of course once the virus does hit and get tracked in from some westerner going there is could be catastrophic

I don't know much about the Townships in SA, but I can't imagine there's a huge amount of travel in and out. Quite possibly it's spreading slowly in those areas already, though?

If you think that refugee camps and India are doing ok, then you haven't been using Google very well. In India the vast majority of the population have no health care nor the money to access it. Nobody, least of all many other Indians, care whether they live or die. There are few reported deaths of coronavirus because they die all the time. Besides which, many of them will starve to death in a country where people live on a day to day basis, earning today what they need to pay tomorrow. Since they can't earn in lockdown, they won't last very long.

It matters little what they will die of, because they will die.

The same is true of refugee camps - in many areas nobody cares whether they live or die. Few will test, and where they are being tested, there is evidence that's it's entering camps most of which have no sanitation, no water supplies and no room to social distance.

In all cases poverty is a killer that any disease simply helps along. Even in the so-called "developed countries" the evidence is there that it is the poor and minorities (often a close correlation between the two) who are disproportionately represented amongst the infected, seriously ill, and dead. It's true in the UK. It's true in the USA. Why would the disease skip happily over "natural breeding grounds" presented to it by poverty and limited health care?

I did think about the amount of travel too and from camps, that's true.

It's hard to tell but at least it's a good outcome for everywhere else

There have been cases of Coronavirus in refugee camps and countries where the population are particularly vulnerable, like Syria and Yemen. It was slower to spread there, but now it has, the impact could be massive. You have to remember our greatest defence against this disease right now is hand washing and social distancing, which is all difficult to do in overcrowded refugee camps.

The other danger is countries where the population is already reliant on humanitarian aid due to conflict, poverty or drought. In countries like Yemen, where millions of people are suffering from malnutrition, will be incredibly vulnerable to an outbreak of Coronavirus and their bodies won’t be able to fight off the illness. And their healthcare system is already on the brink of collapse and won’t be able to treat people adequately, especially if widespread.

The UN warned that the impact of Coronavirus is likely to have a disproportionate impact on poorer countries, where over 30 countries in the developing world could experience famine and see hunger levels double: www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/21/coronavirus-pandemic-will-cause-famine-of-biblical-proportions

So we might not have seen the impact yet, but it’s only a matter of time before developing countries are hit hard by this.