A cataclysm of hunger and disease

The following is an excerpt from a column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof:

We think of COVID-19 as killing primarily the elderly around the world, but in poor countries it is more cataclysmic than that.

It is killing children through malnutrition. It is leading more people to die from tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS. It is forcing girls out of school and into child marriages. It is causing women to die in childbirth. It is setting back efforts to eradicate polio, fight malaria and reduce female genital mutilation. It is leading to lapses in vitamin A distribution that will cause more children to suffer blindness and die.

The United Nations Population Fund warns that COVID-19 may lead to an additional 13 million child marriages around the world and to some 47 million women being unable to get access to modern contraception.

In short, a pandemic of disease, illiteracy and extreme poverty is following on the heels of this coronavirus pandemic — and it is hitting children hardest.

The greatest impact of COVID-19 may be not on those whom the virus directly infects, but on those shattered by the collapse of economies and health and education systems in developing countries. Many schools and clinics are closed, medicines for AIDS and other ailments are sometimes unavailable, and campaigns against malaria and genital mutilation are often suspended...

One of humanity’s triumphs in modern times has been a historic trend since about 1990 in which extreme poverty (defined as someone living on less than $2 a day, adjusted for inflation) has tumbled by about two thirds. Tragically, that is now reversed.