Covid 19 Pandemic: Impact on People’s health, livelihoods and food systems

I am worried that we tend to think of financial health and physical health as two separate things. As such we get financial assistance from a financial advisor or accountant and when we have medical challenges we run to the doctor. But indeed, there is a growing body of literature suggesting that the two forms of health are inextricably connected. In order words there is a bi directional causality between the two because a closer examination of the relationship between your finances and your physical health sheds light on how money matters can have a profound impact on your overall well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the world in 2020 has led to great loss of human life worldwide and presents unique challenges to public health, food systems and finances. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of malnourished people, currently estimated at about 700 million, could increase by up to 1.32 billion by the end of the year.

Millions of enterprises face an existential threat. Nearly half of the world’s 3.3 billion global workforce are at risk of losing their livelihoods. Informal economy workers are particularly vulnerable because the majority lack social protection and access to quality health care and have lost access to productive assets. Without the means to earn an income during lock downs, many are unable to feed themselves and their families. For most, no income means no food, or, at best, less food and less nutritious food. 

The pandemic has been affecting the entire food system and has laid bare its fragility. Border closures, trade restrictions and confinement measures have been preventing farmers from accessing markets, buying inputs and selling their produce, and agricultural workers from harvesting crops, thus disrupting domestic and international food supply chains and reducing access to healthy, safe and diverse diets. The pandemic has decimated jobs and placed millions of livelihoods at risk. As breadwinners lose jobs, fall ill and die, the food security and nutrition of millions of women and men are under threat, with those in low-income countries, particularly the most marginalized populations, which include small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples, being hardest hit.

Now is the time for global solidarity and support, especially with the most vulnerable in our societies, particularly in the emerging and developing world. Only together can we overcome the intertwined health and social and economic impacts of the pandemic and prevent its escalation into a protracted humanitarian and food security catastrophe, with the potential loss of already achieved development gains. Only then can we protect the health, livelihoods, food security and nutrition of all people, and ensure that our ‘new normal’ is a better one. What do you think?