‘People are washing their hands with ash because they have no soap’: The world’s most fragile communities need urgent help to fight coronavirus

In my home country of Yemen, the death toll appears low, but the gravediggers tell a different story – they’ve never been so busy and cemeteries are expanding to make room for the dead

The Covid-19 death toll in Yemen is likely to be much higher than official figures suggest (AFP/Getty)

Since the pandemic started, most of us have got used to making video calls to our friends and family. They have been a welcome diversion from the pain and confusion that this virus has brought to our lives here in the UK.

For me, these calls have meant I have been able to come closer to some of the communities that the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) works with. And it has filled me with dread.

On a video call to a doctor in Yemen recently, he told us that he had already lost five medics from Covid-19 at the few remaining health facilities in the war-torn country.

He is now worried that without any proper personal protective equipment, he and others will no longer be able to keep the hospitals running. While his remains open, he knows of countless others that have closed their doors.

For me this is personally devastating. I was born in Yemen and moved to the UK aged four. I have regularly returned – at first to see family, and then more recently in a professional capacity as the poor but stable country has descended into civil war and become home to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, even before Covid-19.

Currently the official death toll from Covid-19 in Yemen is 418. But gravediggers in the southern city of Aden tell a different story. They’ve never been so busy, and cemeteries are expanding to make room for the dead.

The DEC has identified seven precarious places to prioritise funding from our coronavirus appeal – the world’s five most fragile states, along with Afghanistan and the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

I have visited many of these after the DEC has launched appeals for them in the past. Each context is different.

In fragile, conflict-ridden and drought-hit Somalia, I think of Hamsa and her daughter Sada who I met in 2017. Their family lived in a simple tent in a camp for displaced people after losing everything in the drought that year. Conditions were basic and they were reliant on aid organisations for food and medical care. In the UK we take washing our hands for granted, but in similar camps, we’re hearing that people are washing their hands with ash because they have no soap.

What about the Rohingya children I met in a child-friendly space in Cox’s Bazar? The space was an oasis of calm and play for them amid the sprawling and crowded camp where shelters are perched on muddy slopes. With large families sharing small tents, the population density – thought to be a key factor in the spread of Covid-19 – is one and a half times more than New York City. Social distancing is very challenging.

Those children and their parents were already scarred, mentally and often physically, by their escape across the border from Myanmar where they fled a brutal military crackdown. Their tormentors came with guns, grenades and knives. Now they are under threat from a new, silent enemy. With no ventilators or intensive care beds available, how many more family members will they lose to Covid-19?

And the virus is not the only threat on the horizon. The secondary effects could be even more deadly than the disease itself. Global food supplies are being disrupted on an unprecedented scale. The World Food Programme predicts that the number of people facing acute hunger could almost double to more than a quarter of a billion. In Yemen, I met Omar, who at one years old weighed 5kg – half of what he should.

DEC charities and other aid organisations are working hard to protect people from the virus, support health systems and fight hunger in the world’s most fragile communities. Simple interventions – soap, handwashing stations, isolation wards, basic food supplies – make a huge difference. The people we work to support need your help now more than ever. Will you stand with them?

Saleh Saeed is chief executive of the DEC