Citation

Stark L, Meinhart M, Vahedi L, Carter SE, Roesch E, Scott Moncrieff I, Mwanze Palaku P, Rossi F, Poulton C. BMJ Glob. Health 2020; 5(11): e4194.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004194

PMID

33208316

Abstract

Efforts to situate gender-based violence (GBV) within the COVID-19 pandemic remain inadequate. Based on the knowledge that the public health crises of violence and infectious disease are intersecting, we use a syndemic perspective to examine their shared influence in humanitarian settings.

When the humanitarian community exclusively prioritises the lives saved from infectious diseases, such as Ebola and COVID-19, the lives impacted by interrelated factors, such as GBV, can be overlooked.

This narrative leverages learnings from the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to inform and strengthen ongoing responses related to GBV and COVID-19 within humanitarian settings.

For both Ebola and COVID-19, response efforts have overlooked the life-saving nature of GBV services. These services, including one-stop crisis centres and safe spaces, are vulnerable to cessation when health service providers attempt to prevent and control the spread of infectious disease without incorporating a gender-sensitive lens.

A critical opportunity to integrate women within response planning is through local women's organisations which are already embedded in local communities.

Language: en

Keywords

public health; health policy; disease; disorder; or injury; other infection