The global crisis of COVID orphanhood (The Hill)

THE HILL | The flood of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s brutal invasion reminds us that the pain of war often falls most heavily on those with the least ability to cope, especially children.

The same is true of our battle with COVID-19, which has now left over 7 million children worldwide suffering from the loss of a loving parent or grandparent caregiver. Urgent action is needed to protect these children from the many threats they face. The Biden-Harris administration can lead by using the U.S.-hosted Global COVID-19 Summit this spring to rally the world to care for the hidden victims of the pandemic.

COVID-19-associated orphanhood and caregiver loss are increasing at unparalleled speed, with one new child affected every six seconds. It took the HIV-AIDS pandemic 10 years for 5 million children to become orphaned; it’s taken COVID-19 just two years to top that tragedy.

While equitable vaccine coverage can slow the rates of caregiver deaths, the numbers of children affected by COVID-19 orphanhood will continue to rise, especially in Africa where less than 10 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The lack of strong social safety nets exposes these children to extreme threats, including abuse, violence, high-risk sexual behavior, and institutionalization. These risks increase when breadwinners die — a sobering fact given that 75 percent of COVID-19 orphanhood involves paternal death.

Most children losing a parent or primary caregiver to COVID-19 have a living relative who, with adequate support, could care for them. But the time to act is now. Early intervention with educational, economic, and parenting support is needed to ensure that each affected child benefits from the healing hands of a safe and nurturing family — and does not end up in institutional care.

Read the full article here: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/600129-the-global-crisis-of-covid-orphanhood/

A Crucial Moment for Global Nutrition

(The Hill, May 22, 2013)

On June 8, the United Kingdom, under the leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron, will host “Nutrition for Growth,” a high-level meeting where donor governments, including our own, will pledge funding and other commitments to address undernutrition and its devastating impact on the long-term health and productivity of millions of people in developing countries.

Sitting side by side with donors and foundations will be representatives of developing country governments, the private sector and civil society organizations, demonstrating the truly complex and multi-stakeholder nature of nutrition.

Malnutrition is one of the world’s most serious, yet least-addressed, development challenges. It contributes to almost 2.5 million young child deaths annually. Malnutrition is a serious drain on economic productivity, costing countries as much as 11 percent of GDP.

Close to 200 million children throughout the world are chronically malnourished and suffer from serious, often irreversible cognitive damage. Physically, undernourished children are stunted—smaller in stature than their well-nourished peers, more susceptible to illness throughout life, including noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and obesity.

The case for greater leadership and investments in global nutrition is clear. The Copenhagen Consensus, an expert panel of economists that includes several Nobel laureates, concluded that fighting malnutrition in young children should be the top priority investment for policymakers. In the group’s report, they stated that every $1 invested in nutrition generates as much as $138 in better health and increased productivity. Similar studies have found that undernutrition causes between $20 billion and $30 billion in additional health costs every year to treat the long-term consequences of early childhood malnutrition.

While the problem is complex, the solutions don’t need to be. Cost-effective, evidence-based solutions exist. What we need are the resources and the political commitment to scale up proven nutrition solutions.  Political commitment in the form of presidential leadership and bipartisan congressional support works. We have seen it in the Global Fund, the President’s Malaria Initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

We can do it again — this time to scale up and align nutrition investments. To follow the proven PEPFAR model, we should target resources to benefit the most vulnerable; align resources across all agencies and programs; focus on countries where we have committed partners and country-led strategies; and coordinate efforts internationally.

UNICEF reports that 1 in 4 children under the age of five is stunted and 80 percent of those children live in just 14 countries. The Lancet’s series on maternal and child health and nutrition highlights the 1,000 days from the beginning of pregnancy to a child’s second birthday as the critical window of opportunity for human health and development.

Like PEPFAR, we can target our interventions to benefit those most vulnerable to undernutrition, namely pregnant women and young children. We have commitments from more than 30 countries, which as part of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement — a partnership of donors, developing countries, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector — have identified undernutrition as a severe impediment to economic development. A number of those countries have developed national nutrition plans that offer donors an opportunity to build upon and strengthen the country-led aspect of the investments.

We can begin by working with those committed country partners through bilateral and multilateral channels and offer our government’s technical expertise and best practices to galvanize a concrete investment strategy that includes innovative public and private partnerships and financing mechanisms.

There is an emerging international coordination effort for nutrition: the Nutrition for Growth event in London, last year’s G8 commitment to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the UK-led Hunger Summit of 2012 and the growing Scaling Up Nutrition movement. These efforts will help the United States to share with other donors the cost of alleviating this global problem.

This is a critical moment for the U.S. to lead on global nutrition. The June 8 summit in London is the perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to announce a bold global nutrition strategy that outlines a multifaceted and multi-year approach to better coordinate and integrate nutrition resources across sectors and agencies, with clearly defined goals and targets, and with the dedicated resources necessary to achieve the strategy’s stated goals. Bipartisan leaders in Congress must step forward and commit to working with the president to make global nutrition a top priority of U.S. development assistance.

The moment for turning the corner on global nutrition is here, and it is time for our elected leaders to demonstrate anew how American leadership is the driving force for building a healthier, safer and more prosperous world.

William H. Frist, M.D. is a nationally acclaimed heart transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate majority leader, the chairman of Hope Through Healing Hands and Tennessee SCORE, professor of surgery and author of six books. Learn more about his work at BillFrist.com.

This article was originally featured in The Hill http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/301179-a-crucial-moment-for-global-nutrition