ABSTRACT
Purpose: To review and understand the impact of COVID-19 on Pregnant mothers and its effect on Infant's development. Relevance: Postpartum health of the mother is affected in terms of their mental well-being, separation period and stress which may lead to indirect effect on infant's brain development. Therefore an appropriate developmental screening must be done to these infants so that early intervention plan can be done if required. Participants: Studies reporting about pregnant women infected with COVID-19 and their infant were included and women not tested positive for COVID-19 were excluded. Methodology: Comprehensive literature search was performed using the search engines PubMed, Google scholar. Search strategy was devised, articles were selected based on the Inclusion and Exclusion criteria. Analysis: 81 articles were screened and 8 were included in the review. 2 were Observational Studies, 4 were reviews,1 was cohort study and other was longitudinal study. Results: Majority of the studies reported delivery occurred in isolation room with 14 days separation period, Postpartum practices like breastfeeding, KMC are safe to be practiced with appropriate precautions. Longitudinal study in China found negative association after evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on mother's psychological status and infant's early development, by using ASQ Questionnaire upto 3 months. Conclusion: Many articles spoke about the postpartum health of the mother being affected following COVID-19, not much emphasis was given on infant's development. Implications: Since adversity and stress during prenatal period are associated with later impairments in the infant, long term impact of COVID-19 during pregnancy on infant's development is an important area for further studies.
ABSTRACT
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social, economic, and environmental systems worldwide, slowing down and reversing the progress made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs belong to the 2030 Agenda to transform our world by tackling humankind's challenges to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. We explore the potential impacts of the pandemic on SDGs for Nepal. We followed a knowledge co-creation process with experts from various professional backgrounds, involving five steps: online survey, online workshop, assessment of expert's opinions, review and validation, and revision and synthesis. The pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs in the short term. Particularly, the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 have and will continue to have weakly to moderately restricting impacts. However, a few targets of SDG 2, 3, 6, and 11 could also have weakly promoting impacts. The negative impacts have resulted from impeding factors linked to the pandemic. Many of the negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key five impeding factors are lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of institutions and facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-COVID-19-related issues, and anticipated reduction in support from development partners. The pandemic has also opened a window of opportunity for sustainable transformation, which is short-lived and narrow. These opportunities are lessons learned for planning and action, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and 'brain gain,' and local governments' exercising authorities.