Doctors Without Borders sends team to help Navajo Nation battle the coronavirus

A file photo showing houses in the Navajo Nation.
(Image credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

Doctors Without Borders has sent nine medical professionals to the Navajo Nation to help communities that have been ravaged by the coronavirus.

Doctors Without Borders is an international humanitarian organization that works in conflict zones. "There are many situations in which we do not intervene in the United States, but this has a particular risk profile," Jean Stowell, head of the group's U.S. COVID-19 Response Team, told CBS News on Monday. "Situationally, the Native American communities are at a much higher risk for complications from COVID-19 and also from community spread because they don't have access to the variety of things that make it possible to self-isolate."

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The team sent to the Navajo Nation includes two physicians, three nurses/midwives, a water sanitation specialist, two logisticians, and a health educator. The plan is for them to stay until the end of June, but they will remain longer if needed. "There is quite a lot of interest in responding to the needs of Native communities, but there are also enormous needs," Stowell said. "And it's not so quick to mobilize things that you really have to start from the ground up. These were bigger problems long before COVID-19."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.