The UK Just Committed £200m To Fight Coronavirus In Developing Countries And Conflict Zones

15th April 2020

The funds will help people in war zones and areas with little healthcare.

The UK government has pledged £200 million in aid funding to support the World Health Organization (WHO), UN agencies, and international nonprofits to help step up the COVID-19 response in developing countries.

The funds will go towards supporting vulnerable countries that lack robust health systems in place to track the disease and handle infections, the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) said, announcing the funding on Sunday.

Some of the money will go to Yemen, for example, which has been badly affected by ongoing conflict, and where 80% of the population are already in need of humanitarian assistance.

Another country to be supported by the funding is Bangladesh, which hosts 850,000 Rohingya refugees who are living mostly in crowded, unsanitary camps where the disease could take hold and quickly become a humanitarian crisis.

The UK's Secretary for International Development Anne-Marie Trevelyan said that slowing the spread of infection elsewhere would in turn help prevent a future second wave of the virus reaching the UK.

"While our brilliant doctors and nurses fight coronavirus at home, we're deploying British expertise and funding around the world to prevent a second deadly wave reaching the UK," Trevelyan said.

Read more at https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/uk-aid-covid-19-developing-countries-conflict/