More than an additional 28,000 children under five years of age could die in Bangladesh in six months as an indirect result of the Covid-19 pandemic in the worst-case scenario, says a study.
An Unicef report, titled “Lives Upended,” quoted the information that was originally published in a study by the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in May, according to a media statement issued on Tuesday.
The Unicef report describes the disastrous immediate and longer-term consequences that the novel coronavirus and the measures to curb it have had on 600 million children and the services they depend on in Bangladesh as well as other South Asian countries.
“The side-effects of the pandemic across South Asia, including the lockdown and other measures, have been damaging for children in numerous ways,” said Jean Gough, the Unicef regional director for South Asia.
“But the longer-term impact of the economic crisis on children will be on a different scale entirely. Without urgent action now, Covid-19 could destroy the hopes and futures of an entire generation,” Gough said.
According to the report, immunization, nutrition, and other vital health services have been severely disrupted, potentially threatening the lives of up to 459,000 children and mothers over the next six months in South Asian countries.
The organization strongly supports the immunization program in Bangladesh, yet only half of the children received their routine vaccinations in April due to limited access to services during lockdowns and parents’ fear of infection, read the statement.
Unicef has delivered new supplies of therapeutic milk to health facilities across the country, it said. However, uptake of services for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition still fell by 75% between January and May.
“While responding to the Covid-19 epidemic, we must also act to counter the knock-on effects for children urgently and simultaneously,” said Tomoo Hozumi, the Unicef representative in Bangladesh.
He said: “We need to continue life-saving immunizations and nutrition provisions by making sure that both parents and health workers are safe – and feel safe – as they seek and deliver these services.
“We also need to reopen schools safely as soon as possible. Unicef is working closely with the government on these and other critical issues.”
A Unicef survey in Bangladesh showed that some of the poorest families are unable to afford three meals a day.
Suffering in South Asian countries growing
Unicef urged the governments of South Asian countries to take urgent action to prevent millions of families from slipping back into poverty amid the pandemic, which is expanding rapidly across the region that contains a quarter of the world’s population.
In Sri Lanka, 30% of the families have reduced their food consumption.
With schools closed, more than 430 million children have had to rely on remote learning which have only partially filled the gap; many households – especially in rural areas – have no electricity, let alone internet access.
The statement said there are concerns that some disadvantaged students may join the nearly 32 million children who were already out of school before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Phone helplines are reporting a surge in calls from children suffering violence and abuse during confinement at home, it said.
Some children are struggling with depression, even resulting in attempts at suicide. In Bangladesh, a child helpline intervened in six cases of potential suicide in a single week.
The report also noted that life-saving vaccination activities against measles, pneumonia, diphtheria, polio and other diseases must resume.
Schools should reopen as soon as possible provided adequate handwashing and other physical distancing precautions are in place, it suggested.
In recent years, rising levels of prosperity produced significant health, education, and other advances for children in South Asia.
Improvements in infant and maternal mortality were matched by declines in the number of out-of-school children and in child marriages.
But the economic turmoil triggered by Covid-19 is hitting families across the region hard. Large-scale job losses and wage cuts have coincided with the loss of remittances from overseas workers and from tourism.
Unicef predicted that over the next six months as many as 120 million more children could be pushed into poverty and food insecurity, joining some 240 million children already classified as poor.
In order to mitigate the impact on poorer families, the report said that the governments should immediately direct more resources towards social protection schemes, including emergency universal child benefits, and school feeding programmes.
“Putting such measures in place now will help the countries of South Asia transition faster from the humanitarian crisis caused by Covid-19 to a resilient and sustainable development model, with long term benefits for child wellbeing, the economy, and social cohesion,” said Gough.
Tackling critical issues exposed by Covid-19
Unicef recommended that community health workers and other social services staff be provided with personal protective equipment (PPE) to enable them to do their work safely.
The organization also suggested scaling up of low-tech home learning solutions (for example, using a combination of paper and mobile phone-based materials) especially for vulnerable groups such as girls, children living in remote areas and urban slums, and children with disabilities.
It stressed addressing the wide scale need for water supply, toilets and hygiene services in schools and health care facilities.
It also recommended working with religious leaders and other partners to address the myths and hate-speech that the pandemic has given rise to.
Unicef’s steps to tackle Covid-19
The UN agency in the statement also listed the steps that it and its governmental and other partners took to tackle the Covid-19 situation till early June in its report. The steps includes:
-- Reached 356,820 people including children with community-based mental health and psychosocial support.
-- Engaged an estimated 100 million people on issues related to Covid-19 through risk communication and community engagement.
-- Reached 10.6 million people with critical WASH services and supplies as part of infection prevention control.
-- Trained 1.4 million healthcare providers to detect, refer and manage Covid-19 cases in children, pregnant and breastfeeding women.
-- Reached 7.3 million women and children with essential healthcare services including immunization, prenatal and postnatal care, HIV care and gender-based violence services in Unicef-supported facilities.
