Hike In Food Price, Job Loss Is Killing Over 10,000 Children Every Month During COVID Pandemic

Around the world, the coronavirus pandemic and linked restrictions have pushed the vulnerable over the edge, especially the communities which face acute hunger and malnutrition.

Virus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to an urgent call to action from the United Nations.

Further, more than 550,000 additional children each month are being struck by what is called wasting, according to the UN ¡ª malnutrition that manifests in spindly limbs and distended bellies.

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Over a year, that¡¯s up 6.7 million from last year¡¯s total of 47 million. Wasting and stunting can permanently damage children physically and mentally, transforming individual tragedies into a generational catastrophe.

¡°The food security effects of the COVID crisis are going to reflect many years from now,¡± said Dr. Francesco Branca, the World Health Organization head of nutrition. ¡°There is going to be a societal effect.¡±

"One in five young children is chronically malnourished"

In Burkina Faso, for example, one in five young children is chronically malnourished. Food prices have spiked, and 12 million of the country¡¯s 20 million residents don¡¯t get enough to eat.

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From Latin America to South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, more families than ever are staring down a future without enough food. The analysis published on Monday found about 128,000 more young children will die over the first 12 months of the virus.

Across the world, many new patients are the children of migrants who are making long journeys back to Venezuela from Peru, Ecuador or Colombia, where their families became jobless and unable to buy food during the pandemic.

The rise in child deaths worldwide would reverse global progress for the first time in decades. Deaths of children younger than 5 had declined steadily since 1980, to 5.3 million around the world in 2018, according to a UNICEF report. About 45 percent of the deaths were due to undernutrition.