Direct and indirect effects of the covid-19 pandemic and response in South Asia

Limitations

Our models have several limitations, most if not all, resulting from constraints around data availability, especially at sub-national level. Although we were able to use country-level DHIS/HMIS data for many indicators included in our LiST analysis, for some we either had to use a related country-level indicator or average estimates

from the other countries, as proxies (Supplementary Table 3). We also faced limitations with data availability for our models assessing the impact on educational attainment, economy and food insecurity. Even though there is considerable historical evidence on how crises can impact children’s schooling and incomes of households,

it is limited with reference to the unique effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in both scale and rapidity of spread.

We were constrained to apply the assumptions on rates of school dropouts from Indonesia during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and households experiencing food insecurity in Nepal in April 2020, across all six countries.

These could well be under-estimates and as one very recent report from Bangladesh indicates that the proportion of households earning less than US$ 1.90 per day increased from <1% to almost 50%, and those experiencing food insecurity increased by more than

50% (62). For our economic impact model, we used labor force attrition by industry estimated for Pakistan across the other five South Asian countries, as country-specific data were not available. Our economic impact model also does not include gender related impacts, since data on capacity and MPW by industry were not disaggregated by gender. This is a limitation since the type of industry, hierarchical position, level of payment, and share within informal sector are all affected by gender.

© UNICEF/India/UN0375492/Kaur/2020

planning services, antenatal care, skilled birth attendance and postnatal care, and

community-based health and nutrition support services

Ensure safe reopening of schools, with increased focus on continued and increased enrollment of vulnerable children, especially girls.

Continue social safety net programs to support vulnerable population, with increased focus

on women-led households, people with disabilities, and daily wage earners

All countries, including those in South Asia need to continue, and even increase investment in health systems, poverty alleviation, education and creation of human capital, and gender equity, if the world wants to maintain and improve on the gains in maternal, child and adolescent health and nutrition achieved over the past few decades.

We need to do more than just catch up the loss in health and human capital experienced over the

past several months. We need to build back better, overcoming gaps in equity and disadvantages faced by populations, simply because of the geographic region they live in. This pandemic may have been unprecedented, but those in the future will not be, and the world needs to be prepared.