Children and COVID-19 Research Library

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only paralysed much of the world’s economic activities, but it has also made an impact on the educational work of schools and families, teachers, and communities. This brief contribution will sketch the effects of the pandemic on indigenous children and teenagers in Veracruz, Mexico, who are being affected by the closure of their schools – schools that are part of a public network of intercultural and bilingual education for indigenous students, conceived by the Mexican nation-state with the aim of including an intercultural approach and of taking advantage of the diversity of diversities as a learning resource. After describing the negative impacts the COVID-19 pandemic is having on these children and youngsters, this study will also briefly outline some positive long-term effects the pandemic and school closure crisis may have on the future of intercultural education in Veracruz and Mexico.

Does the COVID-19 stay-at-home order increase domestic violence? The significant decline in household income combined with prolonged confinement with the potential assailant may increase household conflict. Despite these plausible reasons for an increase in household violence, economic theory predicts that domestic violence depends on the income distribution within the household. To test these effects empirically, we estimate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on domestic violence using two different data sources in Mexico City. First, we utilize call-center data from a domestic violence hotline (Línea Mujeres), and, then, we corroborate the call-center findings using official police reports.

Recommendations were published for the attention and care of children and adolescents with cancer or leukemia during the pandemic,1 and an invitation and call for sharing experiences was requested by Eric Bouffet on March 2020.2 Reports of children with cancer from United States and Italy had informed that most of the affected patients had a mild disease and very few of them required critical care. The aim of this report is to share the experience with cancer patients cared for in a tertiary care level hospital in Mexico City.

Responses to the health emergency arising from the COVID19 pandemic have highlighted the global permanence of an adult vision in which the gaze towards childhood and adolescence is still prevalent as a future value and which is little concerned with hearing them.  What happened to the present of billions of children and adolescents; what represented them to see their daily life interrupted; how it happened for them at least one season of the year, a year that for some presents five or 10% of what they have lived and that reaches for others up to one fifth of their age. Trying to get closer to the answers to these questions is now increasingly relevant when maintaining proper pandemic management requires the establishment of social distance and health measures that will continue to impact the lives of people under 18 years of age in much of the orb.

COVID-19 has imposed unprecedented challenges to society. As the pandemic evolves, the social distancing measures that have been globally enforced, while essential, are having undesirable socioeconomic side effects particularly among vulnerable populations. In Mexico, families who depend upon informal employment face increased threats to their wellbeing, and households who in addition have young children may face long-term consequences. The Mexican government has not yet taken actions, but a coalition of non-governmental organizations is advocating in partnership with academic institutions for social protection actions such as a cash transfer and basic services subsidies for families with young children, subsisting from the informal sector economy. To facilitate governmental action, we estimated the costs for implementation of these recommendations. The methodology used could be replicated in other countries facing similar challenges.