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Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic is a child rights crisis challenging long-term survival and development of children and youth worldwide. The pandemic and indirect consequences of associated public health measures are compounding pre-existing stressors to survival that marginalised families confront every day, with detrimental and disproportionate consequences. Service shutdowns, reduced healthcare access, disrupted early childhood education and schooling and long-term economic decline will be more harmful to children than the virus itself. The International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health (ISSOP) is a global organisation of health professionals that aims to improve the health and well-being of children and young people with a focus on the child, in illness and in health, within the context of their society, environment, school and family. This ISSOP Position Statement outlines the impact of COVID-19 to child and youth health inequities and calls for action by governments, health professionals, researchers and advocacy organisations.
Statement of the problem
The COVID-19 pandemic will amplify inequity unless we act to ensure it does not
Improvements in the health and well-being of children and youth over the past 20 years, in part driven by the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals, are at risk of being reversed, with widening inequities within and between countries.1 In low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), the pandemic places an additional burden on fragile financial and health systems with pre-existing resource constraints.2 3
In the short term, disrupted access to health, education and social services worsen health outcomes in disadvantaged children and youth.3 However, longer term impacts on health, well-being, literacy, income, professional opportunity, housing and intergenerational effects are potentially devastating4 (figure 1).
A child rights-based approach to defining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children
Rights articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by all countries except the USA, have been difficult …
Footnotes
Twitter @Dr Lulu N. Oguda
Collaborators Karen Zwi, Jeffrey Goldhagen, Nicholas Spencer, Sharon Goldfeld, Susan Woolfenden, Benjamin Jones, Brendan Ross, Bernadine Ekpenyong, Angela Okolo, Christopher Yilgwan, Laurien Sibomana, Oladele Olatunya, Bosede Adebayo, Angela Osei-Bonsu, Rajeev Seth, Ilisapeci Vereti and Shanti Raman, on behalf of the International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health (ISSOP) COVID-19 Working Group.
Contributors RK undertook writing up and was responsible for the overall content. LO and OA assisted with writing up and contributed data on effects of the pandemic.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.