The world’s COVID-19 response has been unsettling especially regarding people living in informal settlements, migrants, refugees, and other ultra-vulnerable populations. It reiterates serious concerns about health inequality, as well as people lacking human rights and dignity including access to basic services and infrastructures to survive the pandemic. India witnessed a massive explosion of COVID-19 infections leading to high morbidity & mortality rates. To control the spread, the lockdown was imposed across the country, substantially shutting down the economic activities, and increase vulnerabilities of over 80% of the population which works in the informal sector.
In this article, the authors use the case of India to illustrate some of the challenges of urban migrants and people living in informal settlements (or slums) during the COVID-19 response and recommend effective measures for action, also keeping in mind future disasters and pandemics.
- Over 95% of the total COVID-19 positive cases can be found in urban spaces; cities in India are more susceptible to the pandemic due to high population density, informal employment or income structures, and weak health services. Slum-dwellers often have poor access to essential services such as water, sanitation, and health care. They depend on day labour and casual work & restricting their movement through lockdown often result in constraining their economic opportunities.
- The lockdown in India created a humanitarian crisis for millions of migrant workers. As soon as the lock-down was announced, many migrant workers in the cities, well acquainted with the poor Public Distribution System, rushed to get home. This further heightened the risk of the COVID-19 spread in urban as well as rural areas that were already battling insufficient healthcare services.
Moving forward, the authors propose eleven-point urban safeguarding measures, recommendations, and action points.
Read more at: Raju E, Dutta A, Ayeb-Karlsson S. COVID-19 in India: Who are we leaving behind? Prog Disaster Sci [Internet]. 2021;10:100163. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2021.100163
