The scale of the refugee crisis brought about by the Ukraine war has shone a spotlight on the plight of refugees and the responses by neighbouring countries to support them. However, many existing national public health surveillance systems, no matter how strong, are often not well-equipped to provide an early warning, alert and response (EWAR) function in the context of refugee crises.
To help countries with this, WHO/Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have published a new report “Early warning, alert and response to acute public health events in refugee-hosting countries”, which acts as an EWAR advocacy and quick assessment tool, of particular use for public health responders in refugee-hosting countries.
Heather Papowitz, WHO Incident Manager for the Ukraine Emergency commented: “We have been working closely with refugee-receiving countries since the start of the Ukraine war and have seen the need to improve health event monitoring systems”.
The new report recognizes that refugees are often more vulnerable to developing urgent health conditions than local populations, and are subject to additional risks due to disrupted living conditions before and during their displacement. Overcrowding in reception centres, especially in facilities with poor hygiene conditions, is also associated with an increased risk of infectious diseases, while refugees may also face difficulties accessing health care in the host country.
“Rather than proposing new surveillance structures to support refugees, the report instead looks at opportunities to strengthen core EWAR capacities and ensure epidemic threats are appropriately monitored to allow for timely detection and response – especially in scenarios where new health-care settings have been set up for refugees and require EWAR assessment, scale-up and linkage to already established systems,” continues Papowitz.
The report also outlines important EWAR tools and technologies available from both WHO and ECDC, a list of key EWAR and surveillance reference guides, descriptions of international reporting protocols, and ways to get country support from WHO and ECDC in EWAR assessment.