COVID ORPHANS
10.5 million-plus kids worldwide lost parents, caregivers to COVID-19, study says

Globally, more than 7.5 million children have lost one or both parents from the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Biswarup Ganguly/Wikimedia Commons



Sept. 6 (UPI) -- More than 10.5 million children worldwide have lost parents or caregivers, and 7.5 million-plus have lost one or both parents from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to estimates from a new study.

The sobering statistics are far above previous estimates and still climbing.

And they could underscore potentially devastating, long-term consequences for children, including "institutionalization, abuse, traumatic grief, mental health problems, adolescent pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, and chronic and infectious diseases."

That's the gist of a research letter was published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics.

RELATED

Hundreds of thousands of children orphaned by COVID-19 globally, study finds

"While billions of dollars are invested in preventing COVID-19-associated deaths, little is being done to care for children left behind," the researchers said. "However, billions of dollars invested in supporting AIDS-orphaned children showcase successful solutions ready for replication."

The investigators said only the United States and Peru have made national commitments to address the plight of children orphaned by COVID-19.

They urged every national pandemic response plan to include timely care for these children and try to prevent death of caregivers by accelerating vaccines, containment and treatment.

RELATED More than 140K U.S. children have lost a caregiver to COVID-19

The also urged preparing families to provide safe and nurturing alternative care and to protect orphaned children "through economic support, violence prevention, parenting support and ensuring school access."

The new study's primary authors are Joel-Pascal Ntwa-li N'konzi of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali, Rwanda, and Susan Hillis of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.

Researchers said the availability of new excess mortality data from the World Health Organization allowed them to update global minimum estimates of children who became orphans or lost caregivers due to the coronavirus.

The researchers found significant variation in their modeling, with greater numbers of children becoming orphaned by the loss of primary and/or secondary caregivers in Africa, at 24.3%, and Southeast Asia, 40.6%, compared with the Americas,14.0%, Eastern Mediterranean, 14.6%, European, 4.7% and Western Pacific, 1.8%, regions through May 1.

The research letter also cites similarly wide variations at the national level: India, where 3.49 million children became orphaned by COVID-19; Indonesia, 660,000; Egypt, 450 000; Nigeria, 430,000; and Pakistan, 410,000, were the countries in which children were worst affected through May 1.

Among the WHO regions most affected, nations with the highest numbers of bereaved children in Southeast Asia included Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal, researchers said.

And in Africa, the countries with the highest numbers of bereaved children included Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

In their research letter, the investigators cited their "Orphanhood Calculator" at Imperial College London that provides constantly updated estimates for every country. It projects nearly 210,000 children in the United States had been orphaned by COVID-19 as of Sunday.

Previously, the researchers said, global totals and comparisons among nations were hampered by inconsistencies in COVID-19 testing and incomplete death reporting.

They said an important limitation of their work is that "modeling estimates cannot measure actual numbers of children affected by caregiver death." They said future pandemic surveillance should include such children.

Separately, a global study of pandemic deaths, released Wednesday and led by researchers at The Australian National University, found that fertility rates, poverty, vaccine coverage and the concentration of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease in certain age groups contributed to a larger risk of children becoming orphaned during the pandemic.