Responding to Needs in the Era of COVID-19

The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) analysis and approach to COVID-19 draws on decades of experience as a humanitarian and health responder in the world’s most complex crises, including as one of the largest responders to the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the DRC and Cholera in Yemen – the largest outbreaks of the diseases in modern history. IRC’s experience finds conflict-affected and fragile countries face a double emergency:

1. The direct impact of COVID-19 and its lethal and destructive direct impact on unprepared health care systems and populations with pre-existing vulnerabilities;

2. The secondary havoc the disease will cause to these states’ already fragile humanitarian, economic, security and political environments.

COVID-19 is spreading to less developed and fragile countries and the protracted economic, political and security crises have rendered many countries ill-equipped to respond to the disease.