As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts routine services and threatens to weaken the health system, over 950 Nigerian children, under the age of five, could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months, the United Nations Children Funds has said.
UNICEF, in a statement yesterday, said globally, 6,000 additional children under five could die every day.
The estimate is based on an analysis by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, newly published in The Lancet Global Health Journal.
UNICEF Executive Director, Henrietta Fore, said under worst-case scenarios, the global number of children dying before their fifth birthdays could increase for the first time in decades, warning that “we must not let mothers and children become collateral damage in the fight against the virus.”
UNICEF Nigeria’s Country Representative, Peter Hawkins, said: “We’ve made steady progress in reducing preventable child and maternal deaths in Nigeria over the last 20 years and it would be devastating if that progress is lost or reversed.”
He said the under-five mortality rate had declined gradually over the last two decades in Nigeria from 213 deaths per thousand in 1990 to 120 today.
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