Updated 17 September 2020 at 06:49 IST
World Bank warns of risk to decade of Human Capital Index growth amid COVID-19 pandemic
While introducing the report, World Bank President David Malpass has said that women and disadvantaged families were most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The World Bank has stated that unless countries come up with a long-term term plan, the Human Capital index which Is defined by improvements in health, education and child survival rates is in grave danger due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As per a press release dated September 16, the World Bank said that the global gains made in the fields of health and education were in serious jeopardy due to the pandemic.
Gains made over the last decade threatened
While introducing the report, World Bank President David Malpass has said that women and disadvantaged families were most affected by the global pandemic and the COVID-19 stress has left them, especially those in poor countries, vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty. The report features the World Bank 2020 Human Capital Index which draws upon data from 174 countries that cover 98 percent of the world's population.
According to the World Bank, before the pandemic forced countries into lockdown and choked international trade “most countries had made steady progress in building the human capital of children, with the biggest strides made in low-income countries”. It also stated that if these gains and improvements were to be protected then countries must expand their health service coverage areas and also improve the quality of health services among marginalised communities.
The World Bank also stressed that countries must ‘boost learning outcomes’ by increasing school enrollments and must extend support to vulnerable families with social protection measures. The global financial agency said that due to the pandemic, almost one billion children around the world had already missed on average half a year of schooling.
The World Bank has called upon the counties to adopt ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in several human index fields in order to recover the ground lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel coronavirus, named COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation, has now infected over 28 million people worldwide with the global death toll reaching over 900,000.
(Representative Image)
Published By : Shubham Bose
Published On: 17 September 2020 at 06:49 IST