As countries around the world scramble to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus and its deadlier variants, one group has been largely left out of the conversation: 26 million refugees.
In the quest for herd immunity, experts say including refugees in national immunization efforts is critical to ending the pandemic. Yet refugees, most of whom have fled conflict or persecution in their home countries, are missing from more than one-third of countries’ national vaccine plans. Turkey hosts the largest refugee population with 3.6 million people but has not said if they will be included in its national rollout. Neither has Pakistan, which is home to 1.4 million refugees.
