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Feature

The world’s refugees remain last in line for covid-19 vaccines

BMJ 2022; 376 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o703 (Published 29 March 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;376:o703
  1. Sally Howard1,
  2. Geetanjali Krishna, freelance journalists2
  1. 1London
  2. 2New Delhi
  1. indiastoryagency{at}gmail.com

Neither supply nor hesitancy is a major barrier to covid-19 vaccination for the world’s displaced people, report Sally Howard and Geetanjali Krishna

Jannat Bahar, a 45 year old single mother of eight children, sits behind a wooden grocery stand in the Rohingya refugee camp in Mewat, a small town in the Indian state of Haryana. Bahar fled to India several years ago but still cannot speak Hindi, India’s lingua franca. “When the covid vaccination drive was held in my camp, some people came to explain why it was necessary,” she says. “But I didn’t understand a word.” Over four months since the vaccine drive to reach the 1750 refugees living in Mewat, Bahar remains unvaccinated.

Mir Khan, 72, a labourer and Hindu Pakistani refugee living in Anganwa camp in Jodhpur, says that vaccination became a means of stigmatising the refugees who worked as day labourers as they were not initially offered vaccines when host nationals were. “Many people in the camp were unable to get even daily wage work because their employers feared that they might spread infection,” he says.

Two years into the pandemic, 34.7% of the world’s population have not had a single dose of vaccine.1 For vulnerable groups such as refugees and internally displaced persons—85% of whom are hosted in low and middle income countries—the disparity in comparison with the citizens of the countries they live in is stark. India, for example, has 500 million unvaccinated people,2 one of the world’s highest numbers. Many of these unvaccinated people are the nation’s most marginalised (57% of the eligible population are fully vaccinated).1 In India, reliable data do not exist on …

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