Report on the progress on sanitation and hygiene in schools during COVID-19. Global school closures in response to COVID-19 affect up to 1.6 billion children and present an unprecedented risk to their education and wellbeing. WHO and UNICEF guidelines on infection prevention in schools identify a range of measures that need to be in place for schools to reopen and operate safely, including regular handwashing with soap and water, daily disinfection and basic drinking water and sanitation services. Yet the latest global estimates found that in the 60 countries identified as having the highest risk of health and humanitarian crisis due to COVID-19, one in two schools lacked basic water and sanitation services and three in four lacked basic handwashing services at the start of the pandemic. Accelerating progress in countries with the lowest coverage of WASH in schools will therefore be critical to improving school safety during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The full report is available.
Report on the crisis of child food poverty – a state where young children are not fed the bare minimum number of food groups they need in early childhood. It presents data to illustrate how many children are experiencing food poverty, how many children are living in severe food poverty, what their diets look like, where they live – including in which households, communities and countries – and how these metrics have changed over time. The full report is available
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Article on the global and regional prevalence of deficiency in at least one of three micronutrients among preschool-aged children (aged 6-59 months) and non-pregnant women of reproductive age (aged 15-49 years). In this pooled analysis individual-level biomarker data for micronutrient status from nationally representative, population-based surveys was analyzed. Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression was used to estimate the prevalence of deficiency in at least one of three micronutrients for preschool-aged children (iron, zinc, and vitamin A) and for non-pregnant women of reproductive age (iron, zinc, and folate), globally and in seven regions using 24 nationally representative surveys done between 2003 and 2019.
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Report on assessing and mitigating the impact of shocks on food security and nutrition in the Asia Pacific region to obtain lessons from the COVID-19 response for informing the Global Food Crises response. It lays out a series of studies undertaken by WFP and partners to better understand the realities of the food security and nutrition landscape since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. These are based on experiences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, where WFP has continually assessed household vulnerability to food and nutrition insecurity through monitoring surveys, while simultaneously providing technical assistance and operations support for programs in response to the pandemic in the Asia Pacific region. In addition to WFP’s food security monitoring reports and data made available from WFP’s Fill the Nutrient Gap analyses, this brief utilizes secondary data relevant to the crisis, as well as four documents recently published by WFP and its partners. While the focus of this brief is on the COVID-19 crisis, its lessons can be applied now and into the future. Other types of covariate shocks will create compounding problems for countries.
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