COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: documenting and sharing context-specific programmatic experiences

• Main Authors: Neha S. Singh, Orit Abrahim, Chiara Altare, Karl Blanchet, Caroline Favas, Alex Odlum, Paul B. Spiegel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2020-11-01
• Series: Conflict and Health
• Subjects: COVID-19; Humanitarian; Refugee; Conflict; Crisis; Platform
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13031-020-00321-w

Abstract Humanitarian organizations have developed innovative and context specific interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as guidance has been normative in nature and most are not humanitarian specific. In April 2020, three universities developed a COVID-19 humanitarian-specific website ( www.covid19humanitarian.com ) to allow humanitarians from the field to upload their experiences or be interviewed by academics to share their creative responses adapted to their specific country challenges in a standardised manner. These field experiences are reviewed by the three universities together with various guidance documents and uploaded to the website using an operational framework. The website currently hosts 135 guidance documents developed by 65 different organizations, and 65 field experiences shared by 29 organizations from 27 countries covering 38 thematic areas. Examples of challenges and innovative solutions from humanitarian settings are provided for triage and sexual and gender-based violence. Offering open access resources on a neutral platform by academics can provide a space for constructive dialogue among humanitarians at the country, regional and global levels, allowing humanitarian actors at the country level to have a strong and central voice. We believe that this neutral and openly accessible platform can serve as an example for future large-scale emergencies and epidemics.