The United Nations’ Children’s Fund (Unicef) has warned that actions taken to help combat the Covid-19 virus, such as harsh lockdowns, could harm children’s health more than Covid itself.

Dr Stefan Peterson, chief of health at the organization, said that children in developing countries were now at a greater risk of dying from other diseases due to harsh lockdowns.

Speaking to the British newspaper, The Telegraph,Peterson said: ‘Indiscriminate lockdown measures do not have an optimal effect on the virus. If you’re asking families to stay at home in one room in a slum, without food or water, that won’t limit virus transmission. I’m concerned that lockdown measures have been copied between countries for lack of knowing what to do, rarely with any contextualisation for the local situation.’

This comes after an article in the respected medical journal, The Lancet, said that global child and maternity mortality rates could rise as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This was because people would avoid medical care facilities because of fear of being exposed to the virus and because resources were being diverted to combat the coronavirus.

According to the journal up to 117 million children living in low and middle-income countries could miss routine vaccinations this year. In addition, in a worst-case scenario, over one million children could die along with 57 000 mothers, over the next six months, as resources are diverted to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

Said Peterson: ‘[P]neumonia, diarrhoea, measles, death in childbirth, these are the reasons we will see deaths rise. These threats far outweighs any threat presented by the coronavirus in low and middle income countries.’

According to Peterson Covid-19 was rapidly becoming a ‘child’s rights crisis’.

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay