The Unequal Pandemic
The Unequal Pandemic
Philanthropic Support for the health of marginalized communities
A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, INTERSOS reflects on the stages of the emergency intervention
and the results achieved.
BACKGROUND
On March 9th 2020, Italy entered a lockdown, which became a symbolic start for the Coronavirus-19 pandemic in the country. A year later, the nation faces over 80,000 deaths and 17,000 businesses have declared that they will not be able to reopen.
The virus has hit the population very hard, exacerbating existing social disparities. Those hit the hardest are, in fact, the most marginalized sections of the population, who are effectively excluded from access to fundamental rights and services, particularly in the public health sector.
INTERSOS DURING COVID-19
WHAT INTERSOS HAS ACCOMPLISHED
INTERSOS activities aimed at understanding the needs of the most vulnerable sectors of the population. They reached those individuals who- for numerous reasons – have difficulties in accessing public health care and engaged communities through the dissemination of accurate information meant to increase their understanding of, and access to health services. This is what INTERSOS has accomplished in one year of intervention to combat COVID-19. These actions have led to the creation of a real model, a health-centric approach focused on proximity of care and medicine, designed for and with the most vulnerable and dispossessed communities in mind.
THE INTERVENTION
At the start of the COVID-19 emergency, INTERSOS was already operative in Italy with projects supporting the vulnerable. From the very first stages of the epidemic, INTERSOS teams expanded, strengthened and partially reconverted their own response actions, including of measures to combat COVID-19 and to implement an “on the road” response to reach the primary informal settlements, that are places most at risk due to population density and inadequate sanitary conditions.
WHERE?
INTERSOS mobile teams have been and continue to carry out health surveillance, health education and health promotion activities, also through the distribution of hygiene kits in Rome in housing occupations, in informal settlements near railway stations, and in reception centers for fragile people, for asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors from abroad.andin the countryside near Foggia, in the main informal settlements that welcome up to 6,500 people during the winter season,
From the start of the intervention to today, the mobile teams have intercepted and supported 9,500 people through medical visits and have involved 9,947 people in health education sessions.