066 - How COVID-19 May Cause Increases in Maternal and Child Mortality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.6 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

The global health community has worked for years to lower rates of maternal and child mortality in low- and middle-income countries. But while the world focuses on the number of deaths from COVID-19, estimates of indirect mortality due to disruptions in health systems cannot be ignored.

Tim Roberton, an assistant scientist in International Health, talks with guest host Sara Bennett, a professor in International Health, about a paper he co-authored that estimates there could be a 45% increase in child mortality and a 38% increase in maternal mortality in severe scenarios where care is disrupted due to COVID-19. One way to head off these numbers is to categorize care by prioritizing only emergency care that cannot be delivered in any other way.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
0:12.7	Our focus is the novel coronavirus.
0:15.2	I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.
0:21.6	Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's
0:26.9	news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.
0:30.5	If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu.
0:36.3	That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:42.8	Today, guest host Dr. Sara Bennett talks with Dr. Tim Robertson from the Department
0:48.3	of International Health.
0:49.8	They discuss a paper he co-authored.
0:52.3	The paper estimates that COVID-19 could cause staggering increases
0:57.0	in child and maternal mortality due to disrupted care in low and middle income countries. Let's listen.
1:05.0	Dr. Robertson, thank you so much for joining me today.
1:08.0	My pleasure.
1:09.0	Together with colleagues, you've recently published a paper that looks at how the COVID-19
1:14.1	epidemic may affect maternal and child deaths across 118 low and middle income countries.
1:20.7	I wondered if you could start out by explaining to me what your original intent was in
1:25.2	writing this paper.
1:26.6	Yeah.
1:26.7	So obviously a lot of us are worried about the number of people who are going to die from COVID-19.
1:33.3	First, we've seen the pandemic play out in high-income countries, and now we're starting to think
1:38.3	about how the pandemic may play out in low and middle-income countries. In many of these countries, health systems are not as strong as they are in high-income countries.
	...

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