Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Salimullah, a Rohingya refugee, has been living in the Indian capital of New Delhi since 2013 when he fled violence in Myanmar. Stateless, and now homeless after a fire razed his camp, the 35-year-old lives in a tent with as many as 10 other people at a time.
Before the pandemic, he ran a small business selling groceries from a shack. But that was closed during India's harsh, months-long lockdown, and his savings are gone. He and his family have been surviving on donated food, but he has to return to work soon, despite the risk of getting COVID-19 and infecting others.
Although some refugees in India have begun getting vaccines, no one in his camp has received shots. Just over 7% of India's population is fully vaccinated and vaccine shortages have plagued the nation of almost 1.4 billion.
“The disease doesn't discriminate. If we get infected, locals will also,” Salimullah said.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
For months the World Health Organization urged countries to prioritize immunizing refugees, placing them in the second priority group for at-risk people, alongside those with serious health conditions.
That's because refugees inevitably live in crowded conditions where the virus can spread more easily, with little access to the most basic health care or even clean water, said Sajjad Malik director of the U.N. refugee agency's division of resilience and solutions.
“They are really living in difficult situations,” he said.
Over 160 countries included refugees in their plans, but these have been upended by supply shortages. According to the WHO, some 85% of vaccines have been administered by rich countries. In contrast, 85% of the world's 26 million refugees live in developing countries struggling to vaccinate even the most vulnerable, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Some countries, like Bangladesh, pinned their hopes on COVAX, the global initiative aimed at vaccine equity. In February, it altered its original vaccination plan to include nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in crowded camps on the country's border with Myanmar. Initial deliveries were scarce, but in the last few weeks, the country has received more than 6 million doses.
Globally the initiative has delivered less than 8% of the 2 billion vaccine doses it had promised by the end this year.
Even in countries where refugee vaccination has started, supplies remain an issue. In Uganda's Bidi Bidi camp less than 2% of the 200,000 refugees have received a single shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with second doses in short supply after India stopped exporting them after its own cases exploded.
Other obstacles ranging from language barriers to misinformation about vaccines are exacerbating the problem. Thomas Maliamungu, a South Sudanese refugee and teacher in Bidi Bidi, said he overcame his fears to get his first shot only after it was made mandatory for teachers.
“Based on the rumors on the ground, I never wanted it,” he said.
Some countries, like India, initially required documents like passports or other government identification, that many refugees lack to register for vaccines. Online registration was also a barrier for many without internet access.
India started vaccinating people in January. Four months later documentation requirements were eased. The Chin community in New Delhi, a Christian minority who fled the violence in Myanmar, started getting shots in June. By then, India's monstrous surge had already ripped through their crowded settlement, with entire families falling sick and dying.
With the city's health system collapsing, refugees struggled to get a hospital bed and private hospitals were charging around $4,000 for a few days, said James Fanai, president of the Chin Refugee Committee in Delhi. “Getting oxygen was almost impossible,” he said.
Registration initiatives, like volunteers going to camps to help refugees sign up for vaccines, have sometimes fallen flat, said Miriam Alia Prieto, the vaccination and outbreak response adviser for Doctors Without Borders.
“Many aren't in camps but living with relatives,” she said, noting refugee populations in Jordan and Lebanon.
Due to the transient nature of some refugee populations, some countries in Europe are gravitating towards using the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine for refugees. Prieto said that Spain is waiting for these vaccines to arrive. Greece began a drive for those living in migrant camps and shelters in early June using Johnson & Johnson shots.
Refugees are getting shots in EU countries, but the situation is worse in other parts of the continent, said Frido Herinckx, COVID-19 Operations Manager at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent's Regional Office for Europe. For example, only some 1.5% of people in Armenia and 4.2% in Ukraine are fully vaccinated.
In some countries, like Montenegro, the fear of arrest or deportation remains an obstacle and, he said, Red Cross volunteers are accompanying migrants, including refugees, to help them get shots while ensuring they weren't arrested afterwards.
“So (it's) keeping that firewall between ... the border guards and the health service,” he said.
But even if vaccine supply increases there's the issue of liability - the question of who's responsible in rare cases of serious side effects from the vaccine.
Humanitarian organizations can apply to distribute vaccines under the humanitarian buffer - a contingency mechanism set up by COVAX as a last resort. But doing so also means accepting liability for any serious side effects.
Prieto said Doctors Without Borders wants to try to get vaccines from the manufacturers but doesn't want to assume liability. Many vaccine makers have refused to ink deals for vaccines or ship them without that stipulation.
Another obstacle, she said, is that sometimes a vaccine greenlit by WHO is not yet authorized by the host country, creating a mismatch between what vaccines are available and what can be used.
“We're in this weird phase where there's a drug being approved, but no one wants to take liability,” she said.
As the virus continues to spread, the difficulties facing vaccinating refugee populations around the globe could spell disaster for host communities.
“The virus doesn't distinguish between a national and a refugee. So, if you don't protect and save your refugee population it becomes a public health issue,” Malik said.
------
Milko reported from Jakarta, Indonesia. AP journalists Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, and Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.
------
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This story was first published on Aug. 2, 2021. It was updated on Aug. 6, 2021, to correct Bangladesh's vaccine delivery.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.