World Vision International, a Non-Governmental Organization, has warned that unless the international community responds immediately and prioritises the world’s most vulnerable in the fight against COVID-19, huge progress that has been made to save lives and reduce poverty over the past 30 years will be reversed.
Children will bear the brunt of the impact of the pandemic and child mortality rates, which have more than halved since 1990, could now start to increase again.
This stark warning comes on the back of the largest humanitarian response the international aid agency has launched in its 70-year history to curb the impact of COVID-19 among 72 million people – half of them children.
According to President and CEO of World Vision International, Andrew Morley, all their operations in countries they operate in will now be emergency oriented.
“We have never witnessed an emergency of this scale, impacting so many countries at once. For the first time in our 70 year history, we are transforming our focus in every single country to emergency response, so we can support those who are most vulnerable to combat this deadly virus and its aftershocks.”
The international child-focused aid agency is launching a 350 million dollar response that focuses on supporting the world’s most vulnerable people combat the impact of COVID-19.
The ambitious response plan will be executed in over 70 countries where 37,000 staff, 400,000 faith leaders and 220,000 community health workers will be mobilised to support prevention and response initiatives.
“World Vision is deeply concerned that the impacts of COVID-19 could permanently scar the development of a generation of the world’s most vulnerable children. Since 1990, the number of children dying from preventable causes such as poverty, hunger, and disease has more than halved. Unless the international community prioritises countries which are at greatest long-term risk from the impacts of COVID-19, this pandemic will leave millions of girls and boys poorer, hungrier, sicker, less educated and exposed to more violence and abuse.”
The NGO warns that many low-income countries are now entering the next phase of this pandemic, an extremely dangerous phase for the world’s most vulnerable who are battling with lockdown and being forced to choose between risking exposure to the virus or starving.
This pandemic has already swept through the world’s wealthiest countries, and now the world’s most vulnerable children are on the front lines with so little to protect them.
In this next phase, COVID-19 could run rampant through some of the poorest, most fragile and dangerous parts of the world; places where advanced health services are almost non-existent and where lockdowns and social distancing are impossible for people who live day-to-day in crowded refugee camps, slums and settlements.
World Vision is calling on world leaders, who are now focussed on responding to the impact of COVID-19 on their economies, to place equal priority on curbing the deadly long-term impact of COVID-19 on the world’s most vulnerable.
“We have launched the largest emergency response in our history but World Vision and other aid agencies cannot combat the detrimental impacts of COVID-19 on our own. We now challenge governments, individuals, corporations and all those who love and care for children to do much more to limit the spread of COVID-19 in low-income countries and safeguard children from the devastating aftershocks the virus could create.”
“We have one chance to get this right. We must come together and respond to this global pandemic by supporting everyone impacted across the globe, especially the most vulnerable. By following in Jesus’ footsteps, we must support those who need it most —we are called to help.”
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organisation dedicated to working with children, families and their communities to reach their full potential by tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision serves all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender.
