Developing countries have so far been spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, but weak health systems, large refugee settlements, and a lack of access to clean water make many of them vulnerable targets. International relief organizations are racing to prepare and say they need more money for what they expect will be a serious challenge in the countries where they work.
Mercy Corps, for example, has set a goal to raise $25 million for its Covod-19 Resilience Fund. So far, it’s collected just over $1 million. Anissa Toscano, the organization’s vice president for humanitarian leadership and response, spoke to the Chronicle about steps the aid group is taking to gear up for the crisis.
How has Covid-19 affected Mercy Corps’s work to date?
We’re seeing a health crisis that is rapidly shifting into an economic crisis globally. The reality is that Covid will have a lasting impact in virtually every country that we’re working in, including our headquarters offices. That’s a very different dynamic for us in terms of managing a crisis. It’s global.
Our work is in 40 plus countries around the world. We are working in most of those countries because of some element of fragility, whether it’s fragile governance, fragile economic state, vulnerability to natural disasters — you name it. So there are already existing vulnerabilities. The outbreak has an impact on economic functioning, on people’s livelihoods, on already fragile health structures. They’re really groaning at the seams already.
So much of the work we do is lifesaving, and some of it’s with people on the move, displaced people who’ve had to flee their homes because of conflict. We’re trying to work as hard as we can to keep the communities where we work as safe as possible.
In places where we’re doing distributions, for example, we’ve rapidly pivoted to implement health messaging, hand-washing stations, reducing the numbers of people that we’re gathering at a given time to make sure that we’re doing social distancing.
Could you describe a specific example that shows the steps Mercy Corps is taking to provide aid safely?
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a good example. Before Covid, we were providing cash support to people displaced by conflict in the Kivu, in the eastern part of Congo. This is an area that’s also overlaid with Ebola, so incredibly complicated. And then you add people who are on the move with very few belongings with them.
They have limited access to water. People don’t have access to the information they need so there’s the potential for a lot of fear. We’ve seen this in the Ebola response, the importance of getting health messaging out, very clear messaging that people understand in formats that they can access.
That’s meant having to look at, What can we put in place in terms of hand washing? What can we put in place in terms of social distancing? We’re working on ramping up some of our messaging.
It’s also looking at how do we ramp up the amount of water we’re providing to people to make sure that they have water to do hand washing within their homes, looking at how we can access soap. We need to be making sure that we have access to supply chain for things like soap.
Has Mercy Corps been able to get the supplies it needs?
It’s something we’re tracking very closely. At the moment, most borders are allowing cargo through. We definitely need that cargo — where it’s safe to do so — to be able to pass through borders.
One of the things we’re watching now is trends around the prices of key commodities, including food prices, prices around hygiene items, etc.
How is Mercy Corps planning for the possibility of a serious outbreak in one of the areas where it works?
A significant outbreak of Covid-19 has the potential to spread incredibly fast. Health structures are incredibly fragile and have, in many cases, been a casualty of conflict. It is a serious concern for us, places like northeast Nigeria, like Syria, parts of South Sudan.
We’re doing our absolute best to put in place standard operating procedures that look at how we can do our programing in the safest way possible, both for the communities that we’re serving but also for our team.
We’ve had experience doing this. We have had teams providing water and sanitation and cash support in eastern DRC for the past year and a half during the Ebola crisis. We brought on public-health expertise to help us make sure that we’re as safe as possible. We’re decontaminating the bottoms of soles of shoes, we’re washing down cars. There’s hand washing at every point. There is temperature taking outside of our offices.
But that’s not to say that there isn’t risk. This is going to be an incredible challenge for us.
Does Mercy Corps have the money it needs to respond to Covid-19?
We’re working hard with our funders to look at where we can use existing grants, where we can pivot those. We’re in discussions with all of our donors to get as much flexibility as possible.
We need donors to act now. With cases growing exponentially worldwide, we absolutely need donors to provide that support to the communities affected by the coronavirus. We are all connected. The spread of this virus everywhere endangers us all.
Are you concerned that donors are so concerned about their own families and communities that they aren’t thinking about the impact of the pandemic in other countries?
Some major donors are already stepping up and making incredibly generous gifts. And at the same time, we are seeing other major and midlevel donors who are telling us that they’re worried about their communities and some of their philanthropy is going to be focused on local responses for the moment. That is one of the realities that we’re facing.
We started to see some drop-off from our monthly donors who’ve lost their jobs. We get that. We absolutely understand that there’s a lot of uncertainty for a number of people about their financial future. Folks are saying they wish they could continue donating, but they need to be a bit more conservative about their finances right now.
What do you most want people to know?
This is a global crisis. It’s already hitting, and it’s going to hit fragile states in an incredibly powerful way. It’s not just going to be an impact for tomorrow. It will be an impact for a considerable period of time as they seek to recover. We need to be there for those vulnerable populations and stand alongside them and support them.
