Solidarity

Uncategorised No Comments
JNS Instruments factory, plot 4 sector-3, Industrial Model Town, Manesar,  Gurgaon, India,  has 2500 workers. Sixty percent females.



 On Friday, 21st August at the beginning of A-shift at 6am workers did not go to their workplaces.



 Videos of the event can be watched at:



 https://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.noblogs.org/post/2020/08/23/factory-workers-videos/

Our Melting World

Uncategorised No Comments

A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994. That is stunning conclusion of UK scientists who have analysed satellite surveys of the planet’s poles, mountains and glaciers to measure how much ice coverage lost because of global warming triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions. The level of ice loss revealed by the group matches the worst-case-scenario predictions outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  



 “There can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming,” they state in their review paper, which is published in the online journal Cryosphere Discussions.



 Scientists at Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London describe the level of ice loss as “staggering” and warn that their analysis indicates that sea level rises, triggered by melting glaciers and ice sheets, could reach a metre by the end of the century. 



 “To put that in context, every centimetre of sea level rise means about a million people will be displaced from their low-lying homelands,” said Professor Andy Shepherd, director of Leeds University’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. “…What we have found has stunned us.”



 “To put the losses we’ve already experienced into context, 28 trillion tonnes of ice would cover the entire surface of the UK with a sheet of frozen water that is 100 metres thick,” added group member Tom Slater from Leeds University. “It’s just mind-blowing.”



 The scientists also warn that the melting of ice in these quantities is now seriously reducing the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space. White ice is disappearing and the dark sea or soil exposed beneath it is absorbing more and more heat, further increasing the warming of the planet.



 In addition, cold fresh water pouring from melting glaciers and ice sheets is causing major disruptions to the biological health of Arctic and Antarctic waters.



 While loss of glaciers in mountain ranges threatens to wipe out sources of fresh water on which local communities depend.



 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/23/earth-lost-28-trillion-tonnes-ice-30-years-global-warming

Capitalist Cancer Has Only One Cure

Uncategorised No Comments
Democrat and Republican leaders have always played Good Cop/Bad Cop. The first thing to note is when most political commentators advocate voting for the ‘lesser evil’, they rarely describe the lesser ‘evil’ but rather endow the ‘evil’ with numerous virtues. Find the positive things to praise; point out how scary the opponent is; find reasons to say that unlike the opponent a very rich powerful establishment figure is actually on the side of the common people and make sure not to  mention the voting record that shows your candidate is against the common people.

We are admonished by the experts and pundits that politics is the art of the possible and to be reasonable in our expectations of those we elect, who all campaign on the impossible – reforming capitalism into a humane system that acts in the interests of the majority and not for the protection of the interests of the minority. The pragmatists tell us you have to have a seat at the table to enact real change but the real decisions are not made at the tables of government offices but in the board-rooms of the corporations and the floors of the stock-exchanges.

Sanders endorsed Biden because he believes he has bound him to the most progressive platform since FDR’s New Deal – a hyperbolic claim, if there ever was one, although it is merely election promises. The rhetoric is still to be turned into deeds and we shall see, as with all manifesto pledges, they get quickly broken. Remember all those Obama promises of change?

The logic of the lesser evil ensures that each new election cycle will see both greater and lesser evils being more evil than the last time around. Supporting Biden only strengthens the right-ward drift. It is simply impossible to support either Trump or Biden in good conscience. US voters are faced with a non-choice. Supporting Trump is an expression of hateful xenophobia or an act of delusional desperation, but supporting Biden is a clear endorsement of his past record of nationalism and militarism.

A wasted vote is voting for somebody you don’t believe in. That’s a wasted vote. Vote for what you believe in – that’s how you bring about change. It is better to have the vote than not to have it. The wealthy who opposed votes for workers on the grounds that the working class is many and the property-owning rich parasites are few and therefore the many might end the social power of the few had a point.

Sadly, the working-class franchise has not yet justified those fears of real democracy. The workers have been persuaded to play the game: bought off by reforms and conned by leaders, the potential power of the vote has been wasted in every single election.

The answer is not to abandon the vote and ignore elections, but to work to create a politically educated electorate of working men and women who understand where their interest lies. The battle, not just when the electoral whistle blows, but at all times, is to win workers’ minds; to make class-conscious workers. Such workers, currently only a small minority, will never waste their votes on electing leaders, nor will they support any policy designed to run the profit system which exploits and dominates them. We, in the World Socialist Party enter into the electoral contest, using it as a means of putting our revolutionary case for socialism to the widest number of fellow workers. The WSPUS views socialism as a worldwide society. The interconnected nature of today’s world makes it impossible to create a new society in a single country. Capitalism is a world system, so socialism too must be a world system. Socialists often describe socialism as a society where there will be free access, but what could this mean in concrete terms?

Socialism will be a society of free access to what has been produced. This does not mean alcohol being made available to children or anyone being able to get hold of guns. But there’ll be no money, credit cards or check books, no artificial barriers to people having what they’ve decided they want. But how would free access work, and would it lead to a free-for-all and chaos as people just took more and more.

 Abolition of Money. Down through the ages this wild and visionary slogan has been whispered by a subversive few. Ever since human beings discovered money, they have hated it and tried to rid themselves of it – whilst their own actions have kept it alive. In this respect, money is like syphilis. When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, so that person’s health is gradually undermined. It is the same with money as with bacteria. Since money has unlimited power in the world, the ways of the world are bound to be increasingly debased. Step by step, morality is bound to be ruined and human nature faced with corruption. In the end, society is driven to destruction.

400BC: Hey all you thirsty people, though you’ve got no money, come to the water. Buy corn without money and eat. Buy wine without money and milk without price (Isaiah 55:1)

1652: There shall be no buying and selling . . . If any man or family want grain or other provisions, they may go to the storehouse and fetch without money (Gerrard Winstanley)

1968: The Abolition of Money. The abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education, pay clothing, pay medical help and pay toilets. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of ‘full unemployment’ (Yippie election leaflet)

California Aflame

Uncategorised No Comments
 California’s forest fires have displaced more than 100,000 people and killed six and incinerated hundreds of homes, burning 991,000 acres over seven days. Some 560 wildfires were burning throughout the state on Saturday. What is unsettling the authorities is that the state had not even hit its peak wildfire season yet. 
 Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “ There’s no doubt that the risk of catastrophic wildfires is increasing dramatically because of climate change.”
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said, “We simply haven’t seen anything like this in many, many years.”
Among those tackling the blazes are more than 1,300 prisoners who have been entrusted with the backbreaking work of clearing the fire-fueling vegetation in exchange for for only $2-5 a day, with an extra $1 a day when actively fighting a wildfire and reduced sentences. Although when she was California’s general attorny Kamala Harris declined to free those prisoners, maintaining that their cheap labor was required. 
“Their labor has been exploited for decades,” Romarilyn Ralston, who leads Project Rebound, a California State University program that supports formerly incarcerated students, recently told the Guardian. “People are injured, sometimes not fully prepared for fighting a wildland fire.”
Also at risk are the tens of thousands of farm-workers in the region. In Santa Cruz county, where Reyes picks strawberries, more than 20,000 people have been ordered to evacuate as the CZU August Lightning Complex fire grew to 40,000 acres. To the south lies Steinbeck country, the lush agricultural valley of the Central Coast that was the setting for the Grapes of Wrath. Here, the Carmel fire burns at 4,285 acres and 0% containment and the River fire at 33,653 acres and 7% containment. Farther south on the coast, about 10 miles from Big Sur, the Dolan fire grew to 6,700 acres. Together, these fires formed a heavy cloud of smoke that hung overhead as these workers picked their crops. State regulations require companies to provide workers with masks when the air quality reaches a certain threshold of very bad but that doesn’t always happen. The agriculture industry in general is very segmented, with layers of contracting and subcontracting. Safety protocols established by a company may not reach the ones tasked with hiring and overseeing the fieldworkers. Compounding this year’s smoke exposure is the coronavirus that affects the lungs.
“Because of who most farmworkers are, because of the culture that has developed in agriculture, there are a lot of workers who don’t receive the safety conditions that are on paper,” said Lucas Zucker, the policy and communications director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. “There is also often a culture where if you speak up or say you don’t want to work, you may be seen as someone who is lazy or doesn’t want to work and you may not be called back for the next harvest.”
Almost 208,000 people across California work in the frontline essential agriculture industry from the lush almond tree orchards in the north to the cornfields of the Central Valley. Farm-workers already worked in conditions that were ripe for abuse and exploitation, worker rights organizations say. And with larger and more destructive wildfires arriving with each coming year in California, advocates have found it even more difficult to protect their rights.
“Whether it’s wildfire, pandemic, drought or storm, farm-workers are out in the field,” said Lucas Zucker. “It’s a largely immigrant workforce, many undocumented. Many are from indigenous communities from southern Mexico who face even greater barriers to accessing services and reporting labor abuses.”
Farm-workers in California are “particularly vulnerable”, he continued, because of the nature of the crops and the industry. “It’s extremely labor-intensive crops that require a lot of people out in the fields picking by hand. You’ll see thousands of workers out there picking strawberries, as opposed to Iowa, where there are cornfields where it’s mostly automated.”
Paid time off and sick days are not an option in this line of work. Who is going to pay the bills?

Bolivia’s Right-wing Gangs

Uncategorised No Comments
While the media rightly criticized Madura’s use of informal paramilitaries to suppress protests, it seems that similar tactics used by conservatives who usurped power  in Bolivia does not deserve the same condemnation. 



 Since late July, a mass protest movement has gripped Bolivia, including massive demonstrations blocking roads across the country, with people taking to the streets over the country’s repeated election delays. However, many protesters have been harassed and beaten up by motorcycle gangs. Some call them paramilitary groups.



 People are angry because the election has already been pushed back several times. Originally, it was set for May 3. Then, because of the pandemic, it was pushed back to August 2. Then, September 6. And, now, October 18.  On July 23, Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced that the general elections, set for September 6, would be pushed back to October 18 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The announcement that voters would have to wait to choose the president, vice president, representatives and senators sparked massive protests across the country. People called for a general strike on August 3. Protesters also set up a number of roadblocks.



 many Bolivians want to cast their votes as soon as possible because the country is currently run by a transitional government put in place after former president Evo Morales resigned in November 2019. Morales was re-elected in October 2019, but the opposition argued that there were election irregularities, a claim seconded by the regional body the Organisation of American States. The claims of invalidity were later declared unfounded. The protesters believe that the current government is pushing back the elections to unfairly prolong Jeanine Añez’s tenure, even though the candidate from the Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) is leading in the polls.



 Violent gangs have been harassing and intimidating them. There are different groups in different towns. In Cochabamba, they are called “Resistencia Juvenil Cochala”,  currently the most active group, while, in La Paz, the group is known as “Resistencia Km 0”. The group operating in Santa Cruz is called “Unión Juvenil Cruceñista”.



 Resistencia Juvenil Cochala is made up mainly of young men between the ages of 20 and 30, seems to have been formed after the contested re-election of Evo Morales in October 2019. In a video posted online on August 9, leader Yasir Molina called on all Bolivians to “come out to clear out your area.” On Facebook, Resistencia Juvenil Cochala describes itself as a “rapid reaction group defending their town”. Their aim is to get him out of office. “Resistencia Km 0” has essentially the same origin story. The members of these groups use intimidation and violence.



 The Bolivian human rights group, published a statement about this group and other ones like it. The statement referenced the events that occurred on August 8 and 9 and said that “violent actions have been occuring in a constant and repeated manner since the start of the year”.The statement also referred to “groups that have been infiltrated by private actors of a paramilitary nature who have illegally taken powers that belong to the Bolivian police to defend their political positions”. In early February, Bolivian journalist Adair Pinto was threatened, insulted and eventually stabbed by a member of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. Pinto has since left the country and his attacker was arrested. Other journalists had also been threatened by members of the group.  



 The current transitional government and the security forces have largely tolerated, or sometimes outright supported, this group. In their statement published on August 9, the office of Defensoría del Pueblo criticised the “permissiveness of the state” with regards to the group’s actions. A few months ago, the interim president posted a tweet thanking Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. A photo of her holding a  the group’s logo was also widely shared. At the end of 2019, government minister Arturo Murillo attended a ceremony meant to honour, among others, members of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala in Cochabamba. In January, Milton Navarro, who served as sports minister until June 4, declared that they were “courageous” and that they should be recognised.



 “These groups enjoy a certain impunity,” said Fernando López Ariñez, a Bolivian political commentator. “Moreover, traditional media outlets have not spoken out against these groups. Instead they sometimes try to legitimise the actions of these groups, presenting them as civilian actors.”



 https://observers.france24.com/en/20200821-armed-thugs-go-after-protesters-bolivia



  

Workers and the Pandemic

Uncategorised No Comments
 Bal Harbour, Florida,  has emerged mostly unscathed from the pandemic. According to the Florida department of health, 49 of 3,039 Bal Harbour residents had tested positive through 8 August. Surfside, with a population of 5,802, also has 49 cases. Bay Harbor has recorded 45 cases in a village of 5,553 people. And 22 residents in Sunny Isles Beach, home to 20,832 people, have tested positive.



 Roughly 8.5% of the 238,942 residents of Hialeah, the second largest municipality in Miami-Dade, have tested positive for Covid-19. The city’s 20,261 cases is the fourth-most of any city in Florida. Indeed, Hialeah has hit a crisis point. 



 In between Bal Harbour and Hialeah, some of Miami’s historically low income, African American neighborhoods have also been hit hard. In Allapattah, Brownsville, Liberty City and Little River, 7,313 residents have contracted coronavirus, according to the Florida department of health’s most recent daily report.



 Dr Bernard Ashby, a Miami cardiologist and the Florida state lead for the Committee to Protect Medicare, said wealthy municipalities like Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Surfside and Sunny Isles Beach are largely segregated from the rest of Miami-Dade.



 “You are seeing the distinction between the haves and the have-nots,” Ashby said. “If you look at all the negative indicators of this virus, it directly correlates with a person’s race and socioeconomic status.” 



 The pandemic has accelerated the wealth gap while having a disproportionate impact on middle- to low-income workers whose jobs dictate they show up.



  The city’s residents are also most likely working jobs that requires them to be there physically, said Dr Mona Mangat, a physician based in St Petersburg who is also a member of the Committee to Protect Medicare.



 “If we look specifically at the makeup of these communities, they tend to do more frontline jobs, so they are more likely to be exposed,” Mangat said. “More than likely they do not have access to consistent healthcare.



 Despite Miami-Dade being a coronavirus hot zone, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbour Islands and Surfside are still attracting high net worth buyers from New York and other parts of the north-east. These people can isolate themselves from the world in multimillion-dollar waterfront condos and single family homes.



 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/florida-coronavirus-covid-wealth-gap-miami-dade



Cyber Serfdom

Uncategorised No Comments



 The word “gig” has distracted society from important questions about the gig economy that are surprisingly traditional: whether a business has employees or contractors, and how it can avoid payroll taxes and legal liability. Countless business models have been built under the guise of gigs, Uber and Lyft two of the best known cases.



  But with state governments like California facing increasing revenue shortfalls and an estimated 57 million gig workers in the United States noting a lack of employer protections and fair wages, the matter has shifted to the courts. As the protections governing the traditional employer-employee relationship have been increasingly subverted, workers have responded by turning to the courts to rectify this loophole that has allowed their employment conditions to become a form of indentured servitude. And the courts are largely ruling in their favor. These are also consistent with a growing number of decisions in other countries, such as the UK, where Uber is now appealing a lower court ruling that its drivers should be classified as employees “entitled to employment protections such as a minimum wage and holiday pay,” and in Canada, where the country’s Supreme Court has recently ruled that Uber drivers were entitled to sue for traditional benefits and vacation pay.



 Over the past decades, the rise of neoliberalism has enabled employers to tilt the terms of our capitalist economies heavily toward capital and away from labor, via the evisceration of unions, the deconstruction of the welfare state, and the privatization of public services. The growing use of the independent contractor classification represents the latest attempt to exploit and amplify this power imbalance. What makes this trend particularly galling is that the main economic drivers of this transition to serfdom fancy themselves as enlightened, socially “woke” corporations but in fact all embrace employment practices more evocative of the 19th-century robber barons.



  In the judgments, the courts explicitly highlighted the massive imbalance in the so-called “contractor” relationship between the companies and their respective workforces, which invalidates any notion of the “contractors” being genuinely independent.  The Canadian Supreme Court specifically cited the inequality of bargaining power between the plaintiff and Uber, noting that the driver was in fact powerless to negotiate any of its terms of his engagement with the company.  In other words, Uber exercises full control over them as employees, but it attempts to escape its obligations by designating the drivers as independent contractors. Consequently, the UK Court of Appeal characterized Uber’s description of the work relationship “a sham.”



 In a genuinely independent contractor relationship, the quid pro quo is higher pay as an offset to the lack of paid benefits. But companies in the gig economy generally don’t operate this way: Uber and Lyft pay minimum wages that in many instances compel employees to work 70-80 hours per week to make a living. That considerably impinges on the contractor’s supposed work-time flexibility, as well as rendering it virtually impossible to afford decent benefits, such as adequate health insurance, let alone sick pay or vacation leave. In the words of a recent report of the National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel (NLRB GC), “Uber drivers—who earn about $9–$10 an hour—can’t expand revenues because they can’t control prices or expand their customer base—the only thing they can do is drive more hours.”



 While they are called “independent contractors,” their independence is illusory because the so-called “entrepreneurs” in reality “do not even have basic control over how they deliver rides… [and] are ‘supervised’ by semi-automated and algorithmic systems that track their acceptance rates, time on trips, speed, customer ratings, and other factors, and drivers can be ‘deactivated’ based on these factors.” That’s not a co-equal work relationship between an employer and an independent contractor; it’s more a form of indentured servitude.



 Taken from here

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-courts-across-the-globe-keep-finding-the-gig-economy-is-the-road-to-serfdom/

Everything is possible

Uncategorised No Comments
Workers know they have to fight for what they need. Capitalism can’t provide what’s needed and that’s why we must go on to fight for a society that can.

In the United States, the anybody-but-Trump are selling out the activists who want a real end to the deepening attacks on the people, here and abroad. Trump is a neo-fascist so how can you not support Biden to block such an reactionary? For sure, Trump is a racist and a demagogue but Biden is no alternative. Liberal presidents, as well as dictatorial ones, engage in repressive acts. It is part of the job description. When progressives claim that threatening to violate democratic norms makes Trump a fascist you are deluding people: real fascism would mean far worse subjugation of Muslims and immigrants—plus the crushing of the unions and the termination of all rights to free speech. The pro-Biden media is trying to panic people into voting for him out of fear.

The Democrats and Biden are a lesser evil only rhetorically. No Democratic president is going to stop the profit-gouging drive against working people abroad or at home. By backing a “lesser evil” rather than fighting for a real change, all you are doing is enabling the next war and all the future wars after that. And ensuring that someone just like you will then again say, “Okay, but let’s vote for the Democrat now to end this war, and then tomorrow…”

We aren’t arguing that they are exactly the same, that they are identical but just that the Democrats are no answer to the Republicans. Both parties are inextricably tied to the capitalist system and must defend it at home and abroad but in different ways: good cop and bad cop. Biden’s softer, liberal approach is to pretend he is on your side and will make some concessions. These are meant to contain and detour workers, not at all to meet their increasingly desperate needs. Capitalism has not escaped a fundamental world economic crisis created by the pandemic and so the system can not so easily offer sops and all the evidence is that Biden, any Democratic administration, is going to roll back past gains just like the Republicans. Given that these policies will come from the actions of “friends of the workers” can we blame it when many fellow–workers become more and more frustrated, more and more cynical and see no way to fight back. Arguing that the Sanders grassroots are not blind followers of the Democratic machine and will ensure that Biden abides by his election pledges is all rhetoric. We know it takes mass mobilizations to stop the corporate assault. The old-line Democratic apparatus hated Sanders because he put together an opposition that threatened to turn the Democratic Party into the party of the social movements. But now he is defeated the DNC party operatives are ensuring it will now be the “graveyard” for the progressive resistance. What they want is good citizens passively voting to get Biden elected. Their function is to disarm dissent within the Democratic Party, not encourage it. 

With the Sanders camp now on-side, the next strategy is to reassure the traditional Republican voter, that all is safe in Biden’s hands with reassurances of his  conservative values.  The “anybody-but-Trump” faction having selected the moderate, “electable,” Democrat as its candidate calculated to win over swing voters. Party leaders want to discourage militancy, mass protests and strikes. Those radical activists outside the Establishment who seek to ensure such an opposition to capitalism are being told by Sanders that they should wait well after the election. Stay passive, make sure “our” side wins in November. If you want the Democrats to win at all costs, then you had damned well better keep the people submissive. Reformists are Judas Goats, helping to lead the working class to the slaughterhouse. “Socialists” who advocate a vote for Joe Biden have defiled the fundamental principle of socialism, that the independent working class must emancipate itself and end class collaboration. “Fair” elections don’t occur under capitalism. All political parties which have leaders can be ruled out. True, in the US there is one-person-one-vote, but it’s not an informed vote. Workers only get to hear the case for continuing to support capitalism. Our socialist voice is swamped out. While the socialist voice remains a small one, workers will continue to support capitalism. 

Covid-19 and Factory Conditions

Uncategorised No Comments
Cramped conditions in some factories and in low-paid workers’ homes, spurred by the UK’s desire for cheaply produced food, may have driven infection rates in the sector, according to David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19.



 Unions say most of those working in UK meat, poultry and other mass food production plants are foreign migrant workers who share accommodation and transport.



 Nabarro, speaking in his capacity as a professor at University College London’s Institute for Global Health, raised the issue of low pay, which may mean employees exposed to the virus feel pressured to keep working. A culture of cheap food was based on driving production costs down – but at a price, he said.



 “It may well be that in keeping production costs down, we end up with a situation where the people who work in food processing are under very, very tough working conditions and are paid relatively small amounts of money compared with other roles.



 “So one could argue that this is not so much structural issues in society as a consequence of the perpetual pressure to get quality of food up and prices down. And so a part of this may require thinking carefully about how much to pay for particular kinds of food.”



 Nabarro said working and living conditions for food factory staff could create a perfect storm for the spread of the coronavirus. “If people are living in very high-occupancy, cramped conditions and they’re sharing transport, that obviously is another way in which transmission is likely. So, if you add it together, the conditions inside the plants seem to contribute to the spread. The conditions of living and travel seem to contribute to spread. And the way in which money is handled if you’ve got to isolate may also contribute to spread.



 His comments may be seen to echo criticism of fast fashion for driving a culture of cheap clothing.

Covid-19 and Child Deaths

Uncategorised No Comments

The unprecedented global social and economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic poses grave risks to the nutritional status and survival of young children in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Of particular concern is an expected increase in child malnutrition, including wasting, due to steep declines in household incomes, changes in the availability and affordability of nutritious foods, and interruptions to health, nutrition, and social protection services. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to increase the risk of all forms of malnutrition. The wasting-focused estimates we present here are likely to be conservative, given that the duration of this crisis is unknown, and its full impacts on food, health, and social protection systems are yet to be realised. The disruption of other health services during lockdowns will further compromise maternal and child health and mortality, and with the deepening of economic and food systems crises, other forms of malnutrition, including child stunting, micronutrient malnutrition, and maternal nutrition, are expected to increase. The estimated increase in child wasting is only the tip of the iceberg.

One in ten deaths among children younger than 5 years in LMICs is attributable to severe wasting because wasted children are at increased risk of mortality from infectious diseases. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 47 million children younger than 5 years were moderately or severely wasted, most living in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to continue to exacerbate all forms of malnutrition. Estimates from the International Food Policy Research Institute suggest that because of the pandemic an additional 140 million people will be thrown into living in extreme poverty on less than US$1·90 per day in 2020. According to the World Food Programme, the number of people in LMICs facing acute food insecurity will nearly double to 265 million by the end of 2020. Sharp declines are expected in access to child health and nutrition services, similar to those seen during the 2014–16 outbreak of Ebola virus disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICEF estimated a 30% overall reduction in essential nutrition services coverage, reaching 75–100% in lockdown contexts, including in fragile countries where there are humanitarian crises.

Based on the microeconomic model projections which indicate that decreases in GNI per capita are associated with large increases in child wasting new analyses applied to 118 LMICs, suggest there could be a 14·3% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children younger than 5 years due to COVID-19-related predicted country-specific losses in GNI per capita. We estimate this would translate to an additional estimated 6·7 million children with wasting in 2020 compared with projections for 2020 without COVID-19; an estimated 57·6% of these children are in south Asia and an estimated 21·8% in sub-Saharan Africa. 
The projected increase in wasting in each country is combined with a projected year average of 25% reduction in coverage of nutrition and health services, we estimate there would be 128,605 (ranging from 111,193 to 178,510 for best and worst case scenarios) additional deaths in children younger than 5 years during 2020, with an estimated 52% of these deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

All content on this website CC BY-ND 4.0 with additional translation permissions

MENU

Navigation