Lima –
Corona virus (COVID-19) has killed at least one parent or guardian of nearly 100,000 children in Peru. Peru’s per capita Corona death rate is the highest in the world.
“Unfortunately, our country finds that nearly 98,000 children have lost their father, mother or guardian during the pandemic,” said the Minister for Children’s Affairs, Anahi Durand, in a statement citing a report in the medical journal The Lancet. AFP, Friday (7/1/2022).
According to analysis AFP, Peru leads the world in overall Corona deaths per capita, with more than 6,000 Peruvians per 1 million people dying from COVID-19.
The Peruvian government currently provides pensions of 200 Soles (Rp 723,000) every two months to more than 18,000 families.
Durand hopes to expand the benefits to include psychological and educational support, and to reach more than 83,000 children and youth.
But Durand also admits that an important problem in Peru’s current system is that many families do not have the necessary documents to receive the benefits.
“Many families come to us and want to access pension funds, but they don’t have death certificates for COVID-19 — in the first and second waves, people died at home, they didn’t meet the requirements for those certificates,” he said.
The country of 33 million people is facing the third wave of Corona and has so far recorded more than 2 million cases. While more than 202,900 people have died from Corona since the pandemic began in early 2020 in Peru.
(nvc/ita)
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