Women and children will pay for this pandemic – unless we act

Wherever COVID-19 strikes, it magnifies unfairness and inequality. In every nation and every community touched by the virus, hard-won progress for women, newborns and young people is being reversed.

This is not the work of the disease itself, but of our reaction to it: resources for essential health care shrink, people fear using health services, and poverty and hunger grow. The problems are compounded by fragile health systems and lack of preparation. A recent study in the Lancet indicates that, in low- and middle-income countries, all these factors could kill more than a million children and thousands of mothers in the next six months.