The deaths caused by the covid-19 pandemic left 40,830 children and adolescents orphaned by their mothers in Brazil, according to a study published by researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
For the authors of the survey, released today (26) by Fiocruz, there was a delay in adopting the necessary measures to control the disease, and this caused a large number of preventable deaths.
The results obtained by the researchers can be consulted at article Published in English on December 19. The data sources used were the Mortality Information System (SIM), in 2020 and 2021, and the Live Births Information System (Sinasc) between 2003 and 2020.
Coordinator of the Childhood Health Observatory, an initiative by Fiocruz with the Faculty of Medicine of Petrópolis at the Arthur de Sá Earp Neto Center (Unifase), Cristiano Boccolini warns that these children and adolescents urgently need to adopt intersectoral public protection policies .
“Considering the health and economic crisis in the country, with the return of hunger, the increase in food insecurity, the growth of unemployment, the intensification of precarious work and the growing queue to enter social programs, it is urgent to mobilize the society for the protection of childhood, with priority attention to this group of 40,830 children and adolescents who lost their mothers as a result of covid-19 in the first two years of the pandemic”, says the researcher, who is one of the authors of the research.
The death of a parent, and in particular the mother, is linked to adverse outcomes throughout life and has serious consequences for the well-being of the family, adds the researcher from the Laboratory of Information and Health at the Institute of Communication and Scientific Information and Health Technology (Icict/Fiocruz), Celia Landmann Szwarcwald.
“Orphaned children are more vulnerable to emotional and behavioral problems, which requires intervention programs to mitigate the psychological consequences of orphanhood.”
The data on orphans is a part of the researchers’ analysis of mortality caused by the covid-19 pandemic across the population. Another point highlighted by the study is that covid-19 was responsible for more than a third of all deaths in women related to complications in childbirth.
The researchers estimate that, in 2020 and 2021, covid-19 was responsible for almost a fifth (19%) of all deaths recorded in Brazil. During the peak of the pandemic, in March 2021, the country recorded almost 4,000 deaths from the disease per day, a number that exceeds the daily average of deaths from all causes in 2019, which was 3,700.
inequalities
The study also indicates that mortality among illiterates reached 38.8 deaths per 10,000 people, while the average for the Brazilian population was 14.8 deaths per 10,000 people.
To estimate the impact of schooling on mortality from covid-19, the researchers used data on deaths from the disease and the distribution of the Brazilian population by level of schooling from the National Health Survey. The results show that among illiterate adults, mortality from covid-19 was three times higher than among those who completed higher education.
Fiocruz researcher Wanessa da Silva de Almeida recalls that schooling and other socioeconomic characteristics affect the prognosis of covid-19 and other diseases. “Socioeconomic inequality leads to inequities in access to health services and, consequently, difficulties in timely diagnosis and treatment of cases.”
The authors of the study point out that the greater weight of mortality among individuals with less schooling reflects the uneven impact of the epidemic on socially disadvantaged Brazilian families, being even greater among children and adolescents who became orphans and lost one of the family’s breadwinners.
