One year of the DEC's Coronavirus Appeal

Today marks a year since the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) launched its Coronavirus Appeal. The appeal has raised an amazing £56million so far for people living in refugee camps and in fragile states.

The Coronavirus Appeal focuses on communities who already had little access to adequate healthcare, water, food and income and who risk being pushed to breaking point by the pandemic, the restrictions and the resulting global economic impact.

Age International’s initial allocation of DEC funding allowed us to help thousands of older people in the first six months of the appeal, including Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh and those living in conflict-affected South Sudan and Syria.

Thanks to donations, in the first six months of the appeal older people received deliveries of food supplies and soap and were able to access age-friendly information about the deadly virus. In South Sudan, we worked to ensure that older people in refugee camps also had clean water. In Cox’s Bazar, older people received health checks including home visits from our Age-Friendly Spaces. And in Syria, older people received support with their mental wellbeing as well as referrals for healthcare services. You can read more on our Coronavirus Response Hub.

However, the pandemic is not over for many of the communities most at-risk and the DEC appeal is ongoing. Some countries are already battling second or even third waves of the virus even more devastating than the first, with new variants threatening to overwhelm health systems and the economic impact increasing hunger.