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Minimise impact of COVID-19 on kids — UNICEF
LIBRARY PHOTO

Minimise impact of COVID-19 on kids — UNICEF

UNICEF Ghana has called for the necessary interventions to minimise the impact  of the COVID-19 pandemic on children.

It says although children may not have been the direct victims of the pandemic, the secondary impact on them had been enormous.

At a recent workshop organised by UNICEF Ghana for media personnel in Accra, it identified the areas of  impact to include child protection, nutrition, health, education and social protection and speaker after speaker took turns to explain them.

On child protection, the Chief of Child Protection at UNICEF Ghana, Ms Joyce Odame, said although UNICEF Ghana acknowledged that before the pandemic some children experienced violence at home this, however, heightened during the heat of the pandemic when children were at home with their parents or guardians.

Quoting the results of a study known as the U-report which UNICEF Ghana conducted two months into the pandemic, Ms Odame said  out of the 1,300 children who participated in that study, 32 per cent responded that their parents and caregivers treated them more harshly than before the pandemic, while  almost half of the child respondents said their parents shouted and yelled at them during the heat of the pandemic.

She mentioned another area where the pandemic impacted on the lives of children to be access to services such as social welfare and child friendly gender based courts, pointing out that, in the heat of the pandemic, these institutions were closed down, as such children who could walk in to these  facilities to seek services could not do so.

She said  children did not know where they could go when they were abused and in the case of the closure of the courts, some children whose cases were pending before the courts before the pandemic experienced undue delays.

The number of children who now engage in labour has also increased.

‘With many businesses closed or producing less and some families income not doing so well, children are now forced to work to contribute to family income. Financial problems push children to labour because they are forced to work to contribute to the family income.

We don’t have data on this but when we look around, most children are selling on the streets. This tell us the impact of COVID on child labour,”  Mrs Odame explained.

Ms Odame said child marriages were also likely to go up with COVID-19 because when parents were hard up, they  sometimes pushed their children into marriages.

She said there was also the potential increase in teenage pregnancy cases with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The registration of births was also affected. According to her, most mothers, for fear of contracting the virus were not visiting  child welfare clinics where new born babies could easily be registered.

Speaking on nutrition, Mr Jevaise Aballo of UNICEF said obesity and being overweight are increasing among children in various households.

A Health Specialist with UNICEF, Mr Felix Osei Sarpong, who spoke on health, said  the impact of COVID-19 on children  would be long-term, adding that during the heat of the pandemic, essential services such as polio and yellow fever campaigns were suspended.

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