Women, Children Suffer as Health Care Resources go to Fight COVID

By Carol Pearson

Women, Children Suffer as Health Care Resources go to Fight COVID

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WASHINGTON – The coronavirus pandemic has caused more than half a million deaths so far in its sweep around the world. What isn’t included in this figure is the impact on the health of mothers and children who don’t have the virus but are suffering. 

For a real-life example of this situation, go to Nairobi at night during the government-imposed curfew. 

There, a woman is in labor. If she doesn’t get to a hospital, she will give birth at home without a midwife. 

“Every time I went to the hospital,” Dr. Jemimah Kariuki, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Nairobi’s Kenyatta Hospital told Reuters News Service, “[there were] more complications … and when women died alone in childbirth, I was like ‘in 2020?’ You are dying? Alone?” 

Kariuki helped start a free ambulance service so women could get to the hospital and improve the likelihood that they and their babies would survive. 

FILE – Daniel Muriri and Christine Wanjiru hold their newly born child after receiving facilitation from the free ambulance service provided during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) night curfew in Nairobi, Kenya, June 30, 2020.

What’s happening in Nairobi is happening worldwide. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, health care and social services for women and children have been cut by 20%, according to a U.N. report. 

“Health systems in both rich and poor nations are massively struggling and the services for mothers, newborns, young children and adolescents are crumbling,” said Dr. Elizabeth Mason, co-chair of the U.N. Secretary-General’s Independent Accountability Panel that produced the report. Mason was quoted in a news release from the U.N. 

Dr. Nicholas Alipui, another panelist, told VOA that children younger than 5 are especially at risk. 

“Initial estimates are projecting that we will see a major impact on under-5 mortality rates, mortality rates for newborns, for maternal mortality,” Alipui said. “The numbers of malnourished children, children who are exposed to abuse and violence, critical loss of access to women’s health, etc., so, the estimates are quite dire.” 

The numbers speak for themselves. The report estimates that nearly 400 million children who depend on meals at school are going hungry because schools are closed. And 13 million children are missing vaccinations. Some parents are afraid to take their children to get their shots for fear of catching the virus, and some countries have a shortage of vaccines.

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