It is sometimes suggested that the Global South is less prone to coronavirus than North America, Europe and China. That, writes New Statesman‘s International Editor Jeremy Cliffe in this week’s issue, is a “dangerous fallacy”.
“Even if the Global South does have benefits of climate and demographics, other countervailing factors make it more vulnerable to the spread of the virus: denser cities, poorer sanitation, less effective state machineries, more people with pre-existing conditions, weaker collective immune systems and health systems,” he writes.
In a long read about the impact of coronavirus on poorer countries, reporters on the ground help tell stories from the favela da Maré in Rio de Janeiro; from Alaknanda, a middle-class neighbourhood of Delhi in India; and from Ikeja, the capital of Nigeria’s Lagos State. The piece frames these stories within the context of a global economic crash, tumbling commodity prices and falling foreign investment. This could lead the Global South to a place “almost too grim to contemplate… but it does not have to”.
Read the full article here.
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