The The effect of COVID-19 lockdown on nutritional and learning needs of children in Ghana: A perspective

Abstract

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread globally, with major health, economic and social implications. Many countries closed schools as a physical distancing policy measure with the short-term view of mitigating the impact of COVID-19 by slowing its spread and reducing the burden on an already overburdened health system. Although the effectiveness of school closures on virus transmission remained a debated issue (Cohen & Kupferschmidt, 2020), prolonged school closure may have had profound negative social and health implications for children and could have exacerbated existing inequalities. In Ghana, all schools were closed down for several months. As a result, the out of school vacation time for most children doubled. We discuss three ways prolonged school closure may have affected children in Ghana . First, school closure has the tendency to exacerbate food insecurity for poor children in Ghana. For many students, not only a learning healthy The positive benefits of school feeding on improved academic performance, and the implications of food insecurity (including irregular and unhealthy diets) on poor educational achievements and related inequalities on children been studied (Schwartz & Rothbart, 2019). A significant proportion of children are food insecure in Ghana. and