The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that the benefits of having children in school outweighs the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
NCDC Director-general , Chikwe Ihekweazu, disclosed this at the meeting of the Paediatric Association of Nigeria (PAN) in Lagos on Friday.
Ihekweazu said he supports the government’s decision to reopen schools.
According to him, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children, and having them stay at home would further aggravate the situation.
He added that 10.5 million children were currently out of school and closure of schools may result to 10 million being out of school forever.
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“You can see why some decisions around school reopening are so difficult to make by the government; how do you balance the need to control this pandemic versus the other requirements children need to live healthy and productive?” he said.
“This pandemic is threatening efforts to prevent major causes of child morbidity and mortality, and threatening the small gains we have made over many years in a very difficult context that is ours.
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I, personally, still support the decision of the Federal Government to reopen schools and try as best as we can to mitigate the risks, at least for now.
“If things get out of hand, we may and we will consider this condition but we all understand that the lockdown had a huge impact on children.”
He explained that just 10 per cent of cases have been confirmed in children and one per cent deaths.
“The few deaths that occurred in children were likely to have happened to them through morbidity that led to deficits in coping with the virus.”
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