{"id":4479,"date":"2020-03-26T20:01:23","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T20:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=4479"},"modified":"2020-03-27T20:09:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T20:09:07","slug":"sweden-coronavirus-spreading-rapidly-in-somali-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2020\/03\/26\/sweden-coronavirus-spreading-rapidly-in-somali-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweden: Coronavirus spreading rapidly in Somali community"},"content":{"rendered":"

STOCKHOLM —<\/strong> Sweden\u2019s Somali community is being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, with at least 6 of the 15 victims who have died of the disease so far in Sweden being of Somali background.<\/p>\n

Somalis in Sweden are complaining that they received information from the authorities too late to act on it, and that the material was inadequate. Most of the warnings were only distributed in Swedish and English. The government is now issuing updated information in 15 other languages besides Swedish. The Swedish national television network, SVT, as well as several Swedish newspapers are beginning to add Arabic translations to their dispatches in an effort to disseminate information to immigrants more effectively.<\/p>\n

Arabic is currently the second-most spoken language in Sweden, even surpassing Finnish since the beginning of the migrant crisis in 2015.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Nuur, the Chairman of the Social Democratic party in Tensta, has blasted the government for not doing more to get information about the disease to non-Swedish speakers, according to a\u00a0report\u00a0by Expressen. \u201cNo one should risk losing their life due to lack of information or failure to master the language of the majority,\u201d he told Expressen.<\/p>\n

The Swedish Somali Medical Association says that areas where many immigrants live, such as J\u00e4rva, are seeing a disparate number of cases of coronavirus in comparison to the general population, according to a\u00a0report\u00a0by SVT.<\/p>\n

Jihan Mohamed, a doctor with the Swedish Somali Medical Association, says that there are unconfirmed indications that the virus may have spread among the Somali population during Friday prayers at mosques. She also noted that Somalis frequently live in overcrowded apartments, and that Somali culture stresses the need for social contact, especially when someone is ill, which may have further aided its spread.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all in the same boat,\u201d Dr. Mohamed told Expresses regarding the crisis. \u201cAll healthcare professionals are working and struggling with everything they have in intensive care and other departments. We have to help with what we can to give everyone the information they need so that they can do what\u2019s necessary to stop the infection.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been estimated that Sweden is currently home to approximately 60,000 Somali immigrants. Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb, has been dubbed \u201clittle Mogadishu\u201d due to its high number of Somalis.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0Voice of Europe\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Origin: View original<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STOCKHOLM — Sweden\u2019s Somali community is being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, with at least 6 of the 15 victims who have died of the disease so far in Sweden being of Somali background. Somalis in Sweden are complaining that they received information from the authorities too late to act on it, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-health-cluster","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479\/revisions\/4484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}