Daily Mirror E-Paper

Challenges faced by children and elders

BY CHRISHALLE SHALINI

“Unlike the earlier years it is quite hard to see the youngest and the eldests in the family struggling to meet their day to day needs post pandemic and the current crisis.”

- A breadwinner of a middle class family

Since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sri Lanka’s economy began to shake. According to the World Bank’s assumptions the pandemic pushed half a million Lankan people into poverty. The economic crisis of 2022 in Sri Lanka, caused a challenging situation due to the inflation, food shortages, fuel shortages and daily blackouts. Recent reports state that since the rise of the crisis, “Children and Elders” are facing the most number of struggles. Apart from the “Food shortage” being the common issue, the children face the education crisis and the elders have the medical crisis.

Food Shortage

“Packing a meal for my children when they leave for school is something I never thought I would be worried about. Since the crisis, it has been tough for us to have three proper meals each day.now with the reopening of school, my husband and I hardly make it to pack breakfast for our children.”

- a mother

According to the World Food Programme, Sri Lanka has levels of acute malnutrition in the districts surveyed. The imbalance diets, consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages, skipping meals are the main causes of the malnutrition occurring currently. Malnutrition due to food shortage, has mainly created a negative impact on the growth of children. Lack of nutritious foods, delays in food distribution due to the fuel shortage and increase in the price of food items are the major issues for the parents or breadwinners of the family to provide fine meals. Surveys say that most of the children have meals twice a day or do not carry meals to school and fall ill due to lack of proper diet practices. Gastritis, headaches, and slow growth are noticed among children nowadays.

“Buying a biscuit packet itself is a luxury move these days. Sometimes when we have no other way of going for a full meal, we do survive with biscuits, which is not so healthy for our kids and the elders in the family. How long are we going to do this?”

On the other hand, elders too have developed various health issues due to the food crisis. Elders are challenged to adapt new diet methods and meals due to their ageing and the familiarity their immune system has with the usual diet practices.

“My mother who is in her 70s was advised by the doctors to include fish and dairy products to her meals quite often, but it has now become too hard to afford fish every week as it is costly. It is hard to find other options instead of fish.”

-a breadwinner of a middle class family.

Education Crisis

The fuel crisis that continuously lasted for more than six months is the main factor that paved ways for every other shortage that occurred. The adaptation to online learning method due to the transportation issue, did not take place effectively as it wasn’t accessible to all students, especially for the students of the Ordinary level and Advanced level classes. Unavailability of network towers, no access to purchase devices and internet packages are a few difficulties faced by students who are mostly from rural areas. The delay in conducting examinations and promoting students to the next grade stressed students as they had to repeatedly learn the same syllabus for a long time.

“Having less digital facilities didn’t support us in online learning during the crisis. Some schools had the chance of covering the syllabus online. We had less preparation and more challenges to learn in the last few months.”

- a student

Taking part in extra curricular activities, inter school competitions and other opportunities were neglected throughout the last few months. This situation has led the students to mental conditions like pressure and anxiety. However, experts do advise the parents to ensure the mental health of every child is well taken care of and met wisely.

Breakdown in the Medical System

The second biggest challenge for the Lankan ageing population is the shortage of medical drugs. Providing adequate care for elderly patients has been quite challenging for doctors as the system crashes. The elders who are under medical treatment fell into serious illnesses as side effects of not having regular medications. The situation is much better now in comparison to the last few months, yet elders are still finding it difficult as not all medical drugs are imported.

Solutions

Many experts state that the fixation of the crisis will take some time. Yet they state that it is important to take care of “Children and Elders” during difficult situations. like this, as they are more vulnerable to tough times. Ensuring the well-being and safety of children and elders is a responsibility as a nation to move forward for a wise future.

WORLD CHILDREN'S & ELDERS' DAY 1

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2022-09-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-30T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailymirrorepaper.pressreader.com/article/282084870682854

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