More than 1 billion people around the world live in slums, shantytowns, and other informal settlements. While controling Covid-19 is challenging in all of these communities, it is especially so in informal Internally Displaced Persons camps in active conflict regions like Northwestern Syria.

Vaccines are scarce, testing capacity is limited, crowded living conditions make social distancing a challenge, and their needs are often neglected by policymakers as the pandemic continues to surge.

But we can’t leave these communities on their own. It is imperative that we empower them to implement feasible, communnity-led non-pharmaceutical interventions based on clear scientific evidence.

We, an international team of scientists, designers, and humanitarians, through collaboration with local stakeholders have researched the best interventions and written up our findings in a scientific paper, and put out a press release announcing the results of this collaboration. A Policy Report is under preparation.

We thank the following individuals for contributing to this project

Scientific Researchers

• Alberto Pascual-García, ETH-Zürich and crowdfight
• Jordan Klein, Princeton University
• Jennifer Villers, Princeton University
• Eduard Campillo-Funollet, University of Sussex, UK.

Pax Syriana Foundation

• Chamsy Sarkis, Chairman Pax Syriana Foundation
• Jean Jaques Py, IT Pax Syriana Foundation

Public dissemination

• Megan Naidoo, public health specialist, South Africa.
• Juan A. Garcia, French National Institute of Health and Medical Research.
• Salma Amzil, designer, Canada.
• Om Chabra, assistance edition, USA.
• Cynthia A. Shelton, designer, USA.