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Live Twitter Chat: International Day of the African Child

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16th of June marks International Day of the African Child, raising the rights of children in Africa. Direct impacts of COVID-19 on children will be important but the indirect or collateral effects could be catastrophic. We’re using this day to highlight the urgency of the current impact of the pandemic on children in Africa.

Our aims are to:

• Promote data and provide the latest evidence on how many including those at LSHTM and many others are already working on child health and also to measure/mitigate the collateral impact of COVID.
• Share learnings, opportunities, and collaborations, across Africa to help promote resilience and better responses and more consistent measurement of effects (highlighting African led solutions and groups).
• Raise awareness of collateral damage and advocate that more investment and attention is given for evidence-based mitigation strategies and better measurement. 
• Introduce the LSHTM’s first Takeda professor at the end of the day!

The day will include 5 separate sessions, each with an expert host from LSHTM, a specific topic and questions to prompt conversation.

The sessions:

• 10.00 - 11.00: Hygiene and WASH
  • Q1 What is the WASH situation for children in Africa during COVID-19?
  • Q2 Are there new opportunities to improve practices in WASH because of the pandemic?
• 12.00 - 13.00: Nutrition
  • Q3 Does COVID-19 pandemic threaten progress on child nutrition?
  • Q4 What can be done to promote breastfeeding, and access to healthy foods at this time?
• 14.00 - 15.00: Childhood infections and immunisations
  • Q5 How might the pandemic affect vaccines for children?
  • Q6 Which health services for sick children may be most affected and how can we protect these?
• 16.00 - 17.00: Newborns  and the first day of life
  • Q7 What effects is COVID-19 having on care at birth for women and their babies?
  • Q8 Africa has more than a million newborn deaths every year, how can we ensure small & sick newborns still get care during the pandemic?
• 17.00 - 17.30: Implementation research for child health: meet the first Takeda Chair at LSHTM 

How to take part

Step 1 – Follow on twitter

Step 2 – On the day, the questions will be posted from MARCH using the – follow this to see the conversations.

Step 3 – If you want to reply to one of our questions, make sure your tweet contains the following

1. – everyone will be using this and we’ll be tracking the conversation on this thread.
2. The corresponding answer number to question number – so A1 for Q1, A2 for Q2 etc.