Simple ideas to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic on refugees with chronic diseases

Type Journal Article Author Muhammad Fawad Author Fatima Rawashdeh Author Parveen K. Parmar Author Ruwan Ratnayake URL https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00277-x Rights Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 23 Publication BMC Part of Springer Nature ISSN 1752-1505 Date 06/05/2020 Journal Abbr Conflict and Health DOI 10.1186/s13031-020-00277-x Accessed 2020-07-04 15:50:27 Series Title Conflict and Health Library Catalog BioMed Central Abstract Disease control amongst refugee populations is a critical component of the global response with COVID-19 [1]. Another critical issue for refugees is the maintenance of life-saving care for non-communicable and chronic infectious diseases, including diabetes and HIV/AIDS. In Jordan, Syrian refugees with non-communicable diseases typically access clinical care and medications at no cost through clinics supported by humanitarian organizations. Since January, the International Rescue Committee in Jordan has been conducting a study on the impact of supplementing clinical care with out-of-clinic support through a Syrian community health volunteer network, on adherence to medications and prevention of severe outcomes among Syrians and uninsured Jordanians with poorly controlled diabetes and/or hypertension (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04229667). It is notable that these patients (elderly, with multi-morbidities, and tenuous access to care), are also a major risk group for poor outcomes from COVID-19 infection