UNICEF: COVID-19 THREATENS TO CREATE A “LOST GENERATION” OF CHILDREN

The representatives of the UN Children's Fund UNICEF expressed serious concern about the fate of children affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They believe that the main risks do not come from the impact of the virus on health, but come from its social consequences.

The executive director of the foundation, Henrietta Foret, said that the lives of an entire generation of children who were under the influence of restrictive measures taken by the authorities in many countries of the world are at risk. The infection itself and the incidence of COVID-19 have a much less traumatic effect on the organism of children than on the condition of adults.

The statistics from a study of residents of 87 countries show that for every 8 cases of coronavirus infection among adults, there is only 1 case among people under the age of 20.

One could say that the relative "ease" of symptoms of the disease among children does not pose a serious threat to their lives. However, the speech in the UNICEF report refers to such factors as the increase in the level of poverty of large segments of the population, caused by the economic blows of the pandemic.

The experts of fund predict that human civilization will experience a 14% increase in the mortality rate of children under 5 years of age, caused by acute malnutrition and depletion of the body.

A similar threat is already being felt in South Asia and in a number of sub-Saharan African countries. According to experts, by the end of 2020, the number of starving children in the world will increase by 6-7 million.

The second problem mentioned in the report is the volume and quality of medical services provided for children. Due to the pandemic, many children's medical institutions were redesigned to treat covid patients. Many children were no longer given preventive vaccinations, which also increases the likelihood of mortality.

At the same time, the problem of medical assistance is complex. Lack of proper care during pregnancy can also increase the number of stillbirths by another 200,000. The mortality of children caused by the lack of timely medical care may increase by 2 million lives in 2021.

The third threat, according to the experts of UNICEF, concerns education.

Many schools were closed due to the risk of spread of the infection, and more than 572 million students from 30 countries (one third of all schoolchildren in the world) were sent home. Somewhere the learning process was switched to the remote mode. However, the fund's experts believe that schools could work, observing the necessary precautions, because children are more often infected not in schools, but on the street, being carriers of the disease. According to the doctors from Washington, the coronavirus can exist in a child's body for several weeks without causing absolutely any symptoms.

UNICEF statistics show that the number of children experiencing a deficit in social services (education, medicine, sanitation, housing and drinking water) increased by 15% during the pandemic, reaching 150 million people.