Children and COVID-19 Research Library

In addition to its drastic impact to human health globally, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on the economies globally and notably in Africa. Countries on the continent have taken various measures to try and contain the spread of COVID-19 such as lockdowns, curfews, closure of borders and other movement restrictions including quarantines and roadblocks, closure of markets, fear of animals, among others. Early indications suggest that the impact on agriculture and food security and levels of poverty and malnutrition will be significant if urgent actions are not taken. Although the economic impacts of COVID-19 will be more significant than the SARS epidemic, the H1N1 flu epidemic and the Ebola epidemic, COVID-19 impact on economic well-being will be observed through two distinct but similar channels. First are the direct and indirect effects of the sickness and mortality, which will lead to an increase in health care costs and loss of economic activity of infected individuals during their illness. Second, are the behavioral effects resulting from people’s fear of contagion and measures taken by governments to control the spread of the infection. The impacts of essential containment/isolation and distancing measures on social and economic well-being are yet to be realized and could have tremendous effects, notably among the most vulnerable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has more than ever shown the changing risk environment, as well as the systemic and overlaying nature of risks that affect and threaten all sectors. It has reinforced the call for multi-sectoral, multi-hazard and preventive and anticipatory approaches that consistently integrate disaster, climate and crisis risk management for strengthening the resilience of people, their agricultural livelihoods and the ecosystems they depend on in a sustainable manner. In her opinion paper, FAO Natural Resources Officer Wirya Khim discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the agriculture and food systems through a disaster risk reduction lens and offers some key lessons learned that are geared toward evidence-based and risk-informed interventions for inclusive, resilient and sustainable agriculture and food systems.

Following the release of the WFP COVID-19 Medium-term programme framework (MTPF), the Nutrition Division has developed a number of guidance tools and documents related to the MTPF pillars of work. The Overweight and obesity in the context of COVID-19 technical note and guidance aims to support WFP's work in the area of promoting healthy and nutritious diets, and preventing all forms of malnutrition. Note that this is part of the forthcoming guidelines on overweight and obesity prevention, highlighting the key role that WFP can play across the various systems – food, health, social protection and education systems.

The unprecedented global social and economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic poses grave risks to the nutritional status and survival of young children in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Of particular concern is an expected increase in child malnutrition, including wasting, due to steep declines in household incomes, changes in the availability and affordability of nutritious foods, and interruptions to health, nutrition, and social protection services.

This analysis focuses on the following COVID-19-related impacts that could affect the well-being of children: disruption to education, rising unemployment, mental health and safety, and risks to nutrition.

This FAO-WFP early warning analysis of acute food insecurity hotspots report highlights countries which are at risk of significant food security deterioration and in particular acute hunger and associated malnutrition. The analysis takes into account all major drivers of food insecurity, with a particular focus on the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides a forward-looking perspective, outlining the likely evolution of impacts over the next 6 or so months aiming to inform urgent action to safeguard food security of the most vulnerable communities in these locations. The report is divided into three sections. It firstly includes an overview of the main pathways of secondary impacts of COVID-19 on food security, nutrition, and agriculture. This is followed by regional overviews and a focus on hotspot countries. The last section lists strategic recommendations which should be urgently implemented to avoid a large scale deterioration of acute food insecurity.

Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions.The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will vary for different groups of rural population, with the highest impact expected to be on farmers and other vulnerable groups, especially women and youth. Targeted support is feasible only by activating a network of actors or organizations within agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and promoting customized technologies and practices suitable for location specific contexts. his brief illustrates the extensive repository of good practices and technologies provided by FAO as part of its online knowledge portals. These practices and technologies can be easily adopted to respond to the needs of the smallholders, rural youth and women affected by lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, improve their food security and create income-generating opportunities. They have been applied and tested on the ground and packaged for the benefit of various AIS actors.

Based on the current data indicating that children are less likely to be main vectors of SAR‐CoV‐2, This article argues that the benefits of school reopening and continuing education far outweigh the risks.

Between 20-21 May, Save the Children undertook a remote scoping exercise to assess the sentiments of children aged 6-15 across seven provinces of the country. A total of 74 responses, including 32 boys and 42 girls, were collected via phone calls by Save the Children ’s Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEAL) staff. The questions posed to the children were open-ended, simply asking about what they knew about COVID-19 and how it has impacted their lives and those of their families and communities. This approach was employed in order to better ensure objective responses/reflections from children.

The lives and futures of children across South Asia are being torn apart by the Covid-19 crisis. While they may be less susceptible to the virus itself, children are being profoundly affected by the fallout, including the economic and social consequences of the lockdown and other measures taken to counter the pandemic. Decades of progress on children’s health, education and other priorities risk being wiped out. Yet the crisis has also presented opportunities to expose and tackle some of the longstanding challenges facing children in the region, especially those from the most vulnerable communities. With the pandemic expanding rapidly across a region that contains a quarter of the world’s population, UNICEF's Lives Upended report describes the disastrous immediate and longer-term consequences that the virus and the measures to curb it have had on 600 million children and the services they depend on.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health and human crisis threatening the food security and nutrition of millions of people around the world, and children among them. Hundreds of millions of people were already suffering from hunger and malnutrition before the virus hit and, unless immediate action is taken, we could see a global food emergency. In the longer term, the combined effects of COVID-19 itself, as well as corresponding mitigation measures and the emerging global recession could, without large-scale coordinated action, disrupt the functioning of food systems. Such disruption can result in consequences for health and nutrition of a severity and scale unseen for more than half a century.

Millions of children in Yemen could be pushed to ‘the brink of starvation’ due to huge shortfalls in humanitarian aid funding amid the COVID-19 pandemic – according to a new UNICEF report marking more than five years since conflict escalated in the country. Yemen five years on: Children, conflict and COVID-19 warns that as Yemen’s devastated health system and infrastructure struggle to cope with coronavirus, the already dire situation for children is likely to deteriorate considerably.

The eradication of poverty and hunger are the top sustainable development goals, adopted by UN Member States in 2015. Yet the World Food Programme estimates that, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, acute food insecurity could double from 135 to 265 million people worldwide. In the absence of mitigating policies, poverty leading to food insecurity will damage the respiratory health of a generation of children.

When a mother's own milk is not available, WHO recommends pasteurised donor human milk as the first alternative.  Human milk banks screen and recruit donors, and have wide-ranging precautions to ensure the safety of donor milk. Screened donor milk principally feeds babies of very low birthweight, protecting them from a range of complications, as well as babies with congenital anomalies or neurological conditions. The benefits of a human milk diet highlight the importance of providing these infants with donor milk for short periods—with appropriate use in the context of optimal support for lactation, such provision can support mothers to establish their milk supply without the need for supplementation with infant formula milk. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is presenting many challenges to human milk banks worldwide and highlights a range of vulnerabilities in service provision and emergency preparedness.