Exam 21: Development and Health

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First, they do not include deaths attributable to reduced access to treatment or prevention for other conditions among people not infected by the virus. As of August 2020, it was estimated that effects in LMICs could include more than 200,000 additional deaths from tuberculosis by 2024, and a doubling of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, meaning a reversal of "years, if not decades, in the fight against infectious diseases" (Nature 2020, p. 169). One modelling exercise in 2020 suggested that immunization coverage had dropped to 1990s levels, meaning a reversal of 25 years' progress in 25 weeks. Second, they do not include health consequences from the economic depression that followed the lock?ing down of major segments of economies and socie?ties. By mid-2020, a worldwide loss of output estimated at US$12 trillion was anticipated in 2020 and 2021 alone-an amount roughly equivalent to the combined GDP of Japan, Germany and the UK. For many LMICs, the trajectory was shaping up as es?pecially grim, as collapses of already fragile health sys?tems and the domestic economy interacted; external income streams crumbled; portfolio investment fled; and a substantial decline in remittances from work?ers in wealthier economies was anticipated. Over the short term, the World Bank estimated in October 2020 that the incomes of 150 million people would drop below its laughably inadequate threshold for defining extreme poverty, with a far higher number of people becoming poor on more realistic definitions.