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The Lost Childhood

A nation's strength of tomorrow depends on its children's state of today!

By Adarsh Kumar SinghPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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"We have our childhood memories to cherish but do they."

What an Irony?

Schools have been kept closed for almost 17 months but malls, cinema halls, gyms, restaurants, offices have been opened with some guidelines. If you just give it a thought of the impact it is going to have on the lives of these kids who are solely dependent on the school education for learning the basic Human values. In­person school educa­tion infuses the component of humanity in the children and it teaches children to share, wait for their turn, negotiate, and compromise. By depriving them of social contact, we are denying them of essential learning and de­velopment.

Though the government may boast of the milestones achieved in the online mode of education, we all are aware of the ground reality. Even if we are successful in getting comprehensive online education coverage across India, or for that matter any other country, my question is, is this the ultimate solution? Our goal should be to balance online and offline education rather than turning online classrooms into the mainstream.

Pandemic effect

There are enough facts and figures to make you believe that this cannot get any worse than that. The UN estimates show that over 24 million students will be dropping out of schools across the globe. In the first quarter of the year 2020 itself, over 370 million students stayed away from schools. According to UNICEF, the closure of 1.5 million schools due to the pandemic in India in 2020 impacted 247 million children of elementary and secondary schools. This is not just their education which they are losing but they are also deprived of nutritious meals which the government used to provide through a Midday meal scheme.

"For the first time in human history, an entire generation has their education disrupted."

Encouraging Sero-survey report

In June 2021, AIIMS director Dr. Randeep Guleria commented on the WHO-AIIMS serosurvey report and said," This study also looked at sero-sur­veillance among children. In the less than 18 years of age group, it was found that more than 50 percent of children and in some areas, more than 80 percent of children from both urban and ru­ral areas had antibodies. This means they were already infected and developed antibodies."

ZyCoV-D: Finally a Vaccine for 12+

With that said, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has given emergency use authorization to Zydus Cadila's covid vaccine, ZyCoV-D. This vaccine is expected to be available for children above 12 years by the end of September 2021. As soon as the Covid-19 vaccine trials are over, the government should use all the means available to vaccinate all the school-going children. If properly planned, in no time we will see things coming back to normal.

So, both the sero-survey report and the emergency use authorization given to Zydus Cadila's covid vaccine for children above 12 years are very encouraging and a step towards bringing back life to normal.

The way ahead

As we are gearing up to vaccinate children over the age of 12 years, there have been many suggestions and reports published to allow school children to schools on an odd-even roll number basis to avoid overcrowding in the schools. The government should ensure that everyone is vaccinated including all the school staff, starting from the school bus drivers to all the teachers.

As the government is busy thinking and rethinking the various lockdown measures and the rules and regulations to be put in place during this, we as a society should pay attention to the childhood of these children which is on the brink of irreversible damage.

Let us all become aware and make everyone around us aware and adhere to Covid protocols strictly. We all should unite and fix this problem or else the childhood of this generation will be lost forever.

"Hold on to your childhood, cause it's the ONLY ONE you've got."

humanity
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About the Creator

Adarsh Kumar Singh

Indian Air Force II Manager of Operations @Caliche II Driving Operational Excellence and Business Success II Building an R&D model

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