A top official of a Massachusetts-based hospital revealed that COVID-19 has produced hundreds of thousands of orphans globally.
WBUR reported that Dr. Charles Nelson III coined children who lost both parents or guardians due to the pandemic as "COVID orphans."
Nelson is calling the attention of municipalities and governments for "COVID orphans," which result in every one of four adult deaths to the virus. COVID orphans are said to be the "hidden cost of the pandemic."
"More than 167,000 kids in the U.S. have lost at least one parent or primary caregiver to COVID-19," WBUR highlighted.
Nelson, who works in the Pediatric Developmental Medicine Research Department of the Boston Children's Hospital, is one of the authors of a study released last July on this global phenomenon produced by the coronavirus.
The study is entitled, "Global Minimum Estimates Of Children Affected By COVID-19-Associated Orphanhood And Deaths Of Caregivers: A Modelling Study," and published by The Lancet. Nelson conducted the study with 13 other doctors and professors.
According to the study, focus and priority was given to the "prevention, detection, and response" of COVID-19. As such, not much, if any, attention was given at all to its "secondary impact," which are orphans. The orphans created by the pandemic have been faced with "poverty, abuse, and institutionalisation."
"Orphanhood and caregiver deaths are a hidden pandemic resulting from COVID-19-associated deaths. Accelerating equitable vaccine delivery is key to prevention. Psychosocial and economic support can help families to nurture children bereft of caregivers and help to ensure that institutionalisation is avoided. These data show the need for an additional pillar of our response: prevent, detect, respond, and care for children," the authors said.
Global data from March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021 show an estimated 1,134,000 children "experienced the death of primary caregivers" that included at least one parent or "custodial grandparent." This excludes the 1,562,000 children that experienced the death of "at least one primary or secondary caregiver."
Accordingly, the number of children orphaned was higher than the number of deaths recorded for those aged 15-50 years old during the said period coming from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, and the United States. The data also showed that "two and five times more children had deceased fathers than deceased mothers." This translated to 75,645 orphans who lost only their father and 29,222 who lost only their mother in the United States.
Nelson explained the urgent need to address the issue since prolonged untreated grief among children would impact them psychologically and biologically.
"Grief manifests itself differently in young children than it does in adults. If children are grieving the loss of their parents and if that grief is not recognized and it's not treated, short term effects can become long term effects," Nelson said.
Nelson disclosed that providing support for such children, whose "world has been turned upside down," through medication and counseling would prevent such ill effects and "resolve" their grief.
"Any time that child cries out for help or shows any sign of needing help, the adult needs to be available because if too much time goes by and the child's needs are not attended to, that feeling of abandonment is just going to get overwhelming for that child," Nelson pointed out.
"What we need is a safety net that gets put into place immediately so that that child is really being protected by adults. And that needs to continue until the child seems to have gotten on the other side and started to resolve this grief," he stressed.
