NPR

Social Distancing Is A Distant Dream In Pakistan's Urban Slums

In a poor neighborhood in Islamabad, houses are right up against each other, families may live 10 or more in a single room and streets are narrow and crowded.
Social distancing is a challenge in tightly packed slum neighborhoods, like this one in Karachi, Pakistan.

Peter Joseph says he does his best to keep his family safe during the coronavirus pandemic. They all wear masks. They use hand sanitizer when they can find a supply – it's in short supply across the Pakistani capital Islamabad, where they live.

What Joseph, a 39-year-old painter, can't change is the risky situation at home: His family of how many lives in one room in a crowded house in

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