by Dr David Bell and Muhammad Usman Khan
In December 2020, it is likely that child mortality increased across much of sub-Saharan Africa. This is an unavoidable consequence of interrupted healthcare access and growing malnutrition in a year that has seen a singular focus on Covid-19. While the WHO reassured children in developed countries that Santa is immune to the virus and he was allowed into the airspace to distribute gifts, increasing numbers of children in Africa will become orphaned due to the reversal of gains in the management of HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis (REF TGF).
The ‘Global Health Community’ that previously prioritized these diseases and the other big child killer, malaria, implicitly considers these avoidable deaths an acceptable cost in the attempt to reduce transmission of SARS-COV-2 – the coronavirus with a predicted infection fatality rate of about1 in 2000 for the 99%of sub-Saharan people below 70 years of age, and far lower for the 50% of youngsters under the age of 19.
