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New Delhi: An economic slowdown due to Covid-19 could lead to 267,000 additional infant deaths in low- and middle-income countries in 2020, with India registering 99,642 deaths, a study said.
The study by World Bank researchers said South Asia had the highest number of estimated excess infant deaths in the world – 113,141 in total – with more than a third estimated in India.
modeling Study, published in online journal BMJ Open Tuesday’s suggestion is that this toll is 7 percent higher than expected for the year.
The study also compared deaths during the economic slowdown triggered by the pandemic with birth data. While India has the highest number of annual births – over 24,238,000 – it has a fairly large projected economic shortfall of minus 17.3% for 2020.
The global economy is expected to shrink by about 5 percent in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, according to World Bank researchers. As a result, 120 million more people may have been pushed into poverty with the loss of jobs and wage cuts across various economic levels across the country.
Such economic shocks increase deaths among vulnerable groups, such as young children and the elderly in low-income countries.
Read also: Equal access to vaccines is not just about health. It’s also about economic recovery
‘Income shock’ affected birth and death of children
For the study, the team looked at the impact of an ‘income shock’, represented by a projected decline in gross domestic product (GDP) – a country’s annual total value of goods and services – on the survival of one-year-olds and low and middle incomes. countries with less.
The researchers also tried to assess how GDP was linked to the 5.2 million births reported between 1985 and 2018—82 percent of these births, the study found, were in low- and lower-middle income countries.
The researchers also took into account the International Monetary Fund’s economic growth projections for 2019 and 2020, which predicted the impact of an economic slowdown on infant deaths in 128 countries in 2020.
The calculations indicated that an additional 2,67,208 infants died in low- and middle-income countries in 2020 – less than a 7 percent increase in the number of infant deaths expected for that year.
The authors also noted that an additional 28,000 to 50,000 infant deaths were estimated for Africa after the 2009 financial crisis. In contrast, there were approximately 82,239 additional infant deaths in 2020, reflecting the large projected reduction in GDP due to the pandemic.
“Several mechanisms are driving this increase in mortality among children aged 0-1 years: poverty at the household level will lead to poor nutrition and care practices for infants and reduced ability to access health services, while also economic distress. may affect the supply and quality of services offered by health systems,” the study said.
With continued efforts by countries, health systems, and the wider global community to prevent and treat COVID-19, the team concluded that “we need to stabilize health systems and the human, social, and economic consequences of pandemic and related lockdown policies. “
(Edited by Paramita Ghosh)
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