Time bomb in the Third World

In the present global economic environment, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres doubtless will struggle to get the $US2bn ($3.3bn) he believes is needed urgently to help combat coronavirus in the developing world. But it will be a pity if the international community ignores his warning about the “ticking time bomb” the pandemic presents across vast areas of medically under-resourced Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, and the need to defeat it there as much as in the developed world if victory is to be achieved. Estimates that more than two billion people, as Mr Guterres said, “lack clean water and soap with which to do the most basic act of self-protection against the virus — washing their hands” sum up the enormity of the challenge. So does Mr Guterres’s warning most “do not have homes in which to socially distance or self-isolate … and, should they become critically ill, they have no way of accessing a healthcare system that can provide a hospital bed and a ventilator”.

Ascertaining the extent of the crisis looming in the developing world is not easy. Indonesia, for example, the world’s fourth most populous nation with 272 million people, has reported 1285 cases and 114 deaths. But academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine claimed last week that was only 2 per cent of actual infections. Similar doubts surround numbers in war-ravaged Syria, with an unlikely three cases; Bangladesh, with a population of 160 million and 48 cases; Somalia, with three; and Myanmar, with eight. As much as the developing world may fall short on verifiable statistics, however, so does it present fertile ground for the deadly pandemic’s spread. Africa has two doctors for 10,000 people in cities. Italy, as it faces an enormous battle against the pandemic, has 41. Almost 600 million Africans, 60 per cent of urban dwellers, live in fetid, overcrowded slums with little hygiene.

For the world’s 70 million refugees, conditions are worse. Sprawling camps housing millions of Syrian refugees are already plagued by disease. The al-Hawl camp houses 70,000, mainly women and children who fled Islamic State. They lack food, water and basic medical services. In the Gaza Strip, two million Palestinians are crammed together cheek by jowl, their only real hope Israel’s willingness to help contain the pandemic. If India’s reporting is to be believed, the country of 1.3 billion people has 1024 cases and 27 deaths. A leading virologist has warned, however, that India is in the early stages of a COVID-19 avalanche with potentially hundreds of millions of cases. Yet across the developing world, testing — so vital to the battle — is poor. By March 20 India had tested only 14,514 people, Indonesia 2028 and South Africa, with 2.5 million of its 60 million people afflicted by HIV, 6438. The picture across poorer countries in Latin America is similarly one of few resources and little expertise. The need to meet the challenge facing the Third World is, as Mr Guterres said, no less vital than it is in the developed world.