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The pandemic is reducing the indicators of childhood, a threatened generation, warns Unicef

2021-03-11T01:04:35.877Z


Dropout, poverty, malnutrition, forced marriages… The indicators measuring children's development are almost all declining.


Closed schools, increasing poverty and forced marriages, depressions: after a year of pandemic, the indicators measuring the development of children and adolescents have almost all

"regressed"

, a decline heralding lasting consequences for a whole generation, warns Unicef.

Read also: Covid-19: are there any precedents for outdoor “clusters”?

"The number of starving, isolated, abused, anxious, living in poverty or forced into marriage children has increased,"

said Henrietta Fore, director of the United Nations Children's Fund, in a statement released exactly one year later. that the WHO had classified Covid-19 as a pandemic.

“At the same time, their access to education, socialization opportunities and essential services such as health, nutrition and protection has diminished.

Everything indicates that children will suffer the consequences of the pandemic for years to come, ”

she added.

She called for placing children

"at the heart of recovery efforts"

,

"prioritizing"

reopening schools and providing social protection to families - including in the form of cash transfers - to avoid

“a lost generation”

.

A 15% increase in poverty

Unicef ​​cites a series of alarming figures in support.

While the pandemic has taken its toll on the elderly, children and adolescents under 20 represent 13% of the 71 million cases of coronavirus identified in the 107 countries providing data by age.

In developing countries, projections show a 15% increase in child poverty.

Six to seven million more children could be suffering from malnutrition or wasting in 2020, an increase of 14% which could translate into more than 10,000 additional deaths per month, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Read also: Covid-19: a return to "normal life" in mid-April, is it "anything"?

For 168 million schoolchildren worldwide, schools have been closed for almost a year.

At least a third of those whose schools are closed do not have access to online education.

At least one in seven children and adolescents has been subjected to confinement measures for most of the past year, accentuating anxiety, depression and isolation.

Consequence of closed schools and the deterioration of the economic situation: the pandemic could also cause the marriage of 10 million children by 2030, who would be added to the 100 million girls considered to be at risk of being married. here there.

The coronavirus has also led to the suspension of vaccination campaigns against other diseases - starting with measles - in 26 countries, further increasing the threats to the health of unimmunized people.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-03-11

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