The Problem

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc in the Global North, the worst is yet to come for the Global South, where the virus is currently spreading at a frightening speed. As of August 2020, eight of the ten countries with the most COVID-19 cases are in the Global South. The Global South entered this pandemic already substantially disadvantaged, and the predicaments, injustices, and improper living conditions faced by citizens that inhabit these countries will ultimately lead to millions of deaths. Vast, sprawling urban areas of the Global South, such as in Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and Bangladesh, are already witnessing a rapid surge of the COVID-19 cases. More than one billion people worldwide live in urban slums, settlements typically characterized as areas with a lack of basic requirements such as water, toilets, sewers, drainage, and adequate housing. Considering these factors, slum dwellers are the most vulnerable urban groups and are confronting higher challenges than the residents of megacities in the Global North. Few, however, are asking how the billion people that live in slums in the Global South might be able to survive this pandemic.

While it is true that the pandemic at its core is indiscriminate and does not recognize class, caste, race, and sex, few events have exposed global public health disparities as starkly as the ongoing pandemic. We already know that the virus is disproportionality killing Black Americans in the US. Similarly, global inequalities, established at the height of colonialism and reinforced throughout the development and neoliberal eras, shift the brunt of international crises—climate change, malnutrition, and, today, pandemics—away from the Global North and onto the Global South. If lessons learned from the previous epidemics had been applied in policy arenas, the devastation would have been significantly less. Previous outbreaks such as Ebola, Zika, and the swine flu have all occurred in the recent past. All of these viruses had a significant adverse impact on the slums around the world. Due to the highly inadequate responses to previous pandemics, these diseases still exist within slums to this day even though treatment and vaccines exist. In a similar vein, despite the warnings from international health organizations, slum dwellers are yet to be provided the help they need to survive this current pandemic.