Introduction
RATIONALE
There has been an increase in frequency of infectious disease outbreaks worldwide over the past 40 years.1 Globalisation and the related increased movement of people and goods between countries and across continents have increased the potential for infectious diseases to spread quickly around the world.2 Even though progress has been made in the prevention, surveillance and treatment of diseases, infectious disease outbreaks remain a major public health concern.
Infectious disease outbreaks may arise during a humanitarian crisis or may themselves constitute a humanitarian emergency, defined by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNIDSR) as a hazardous event that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses that exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.3 As of December 2016, the IASC has widened the activation criteria for Level 3 (L3) emergencies to include infectious disease events.4 An L3 emergency is the classification for a severe, large-scale, sudden-onset humanitarian crisis that requires system-wide mobilisation to scale up a humanitarian response and improve overall assistance.
Children in particular are vulnerable during infectious disease outbreaks for a variety of reasons. Beyond the immediate impacts on their health and that of their caregivers, the social and economic disruptions caused by outbreaks also present risks to children’s well-being and protection.
Experience from recent outbreaks, including the 2016-17 cholera outbreak in Yemen and the 2014-16 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa, have shown that infectious disease outbreaks pose distinct challenges to traditional child protection responses, which have historically been grounded in contexts of armed conflict and natural disaster. Humanitarian responses to recent infectious disease outbreaks have also highlighted the existing gap in available guidance to support child protection responses in public health emergencies.