A trauma surgeon from the UK has warned millions of people from low-income countries could die from COVID-19.
Dr David Nott, who has treated people in crisis and conflict zones, wrote a paper for The Lancet on the virus saying action needs to be taken now or the consequences may be dire. He believes there's only a short time before the disease reaches the most vulnerable countries.
"We really need to start doing something to get on top of this. If we don't there'll be millions of people [dying]," he told Sky News UK.
The most vulnerable countries were places like Yemen, Chad, northern Syria and South Sudan, his report says.
"David Miliband, from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), did a survey very recently on 34 fragile countries using the same sort of modelling used by Imperial [College London]. In these countries, he said there is going to be between 500 million to one billion infections," Dr Nott told Sky.
He says the IRC estimates between 1.7 million and 3.2 million deaths, which is likely "if we don't do something about it now".
In his paper, he says the main positive influences on reducing the number of deaths from COVID-19 have been handwashing, social distancing and lockdowns.
"For the most vulnerable people on this planet, such strategies are not an option. People who live in conflict zones or in refugee camps cannot physically distance, they cannot self-isolate, they have inadequate facilities for washing, and are often without access to health care.
"In other parts of the world where some refugee camps hold close to a million displaced people such as the Rohingya in Bangladesh, there is little time to ramp up constrained health services to respond to COVID-19.
"In fragile settings, there is no massive infrastructure like the [UK's National Health Service]. There are few ventilators... there is no piped oxygen, electrical power cuts are common, and the health workforce capacity is unlikely to be enough to deal with even a small number of COVID-19 cases, never mind the potential of thousands of deaths from this disease."
Dr Nott says people in poor countries have a period of time where the virus won't affect them, but something needs to be done "over the next four to five weeks".
"We cannot wait for another four to five weeks because they will be in exactly the same position we have been in. We have a short period of time to get it right."
He believes the way to contain the disease is by supporting low-income countries so they don't experience widespread epidemics, otherwise it will "get out of control".
Globally, there have been over 3.4 million cases and nearly 244,000 COVID-19-related deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
