ABSTRACT
Background and Aim: The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged coronavirus epidemic as a pandemic and declared the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern. Emerging research has suggested that these various restrictions, as well as the fear of the virus itself, may have caused children to experience negative mental health consequences. Due to increased amounts of time spent at home the parents need to be aware about the changes in the mental and physical health of the children. This study, thus aimed to survey the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on physical and mental health of school-going children. Material(s) and Method(s): A cross sectional survey was designed to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the physical and mental health of children. The data is collected with the use of online survey platform. A semi structured questionnaire was developed with several open and close ended questions to examine the effect of lockdown on the mental and physical health of the children from parent-reported changes. Any mental health issues and emotional problems newly emerged or aggravated during lockdown were also enlisted. Another objective was to determine the level of awareness amongst parents about the importance of PA for the child. Result(s): A total of 200 children were included in the study. When the comparison was done in time from before and after lockdown, it was found that the hours spent on mobile were increased from 2 hours to 5 hours. There was significant decrease in the time spend for physical activity. A total of 65% of the respondents reported that there was change in the behaviour of the children. Around 58% of the children had shown the physical changes like eyestrain, fatigue, neck pain, head ache, lower back pain and major problem with increase in weight of children. Conclusion(s): More research is needed to improve our understanding of the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's mental health, especially with regards to the identification of protective factors found in children who may have been less affected by the pandemic. Copyright © 2023, Institute of Medico-legal Publication. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Western experience shows that with subsequent waves of corona virus disease-2019 (Covid-19), children were affected more and required hospitalization. Universal Covid-19 vaccination among children is difficult to advocate given the low severity of Covid-19 in this age group. Objectives: This study assesses vaccine hesitancy (VH) among an urban-majority survey-population in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and the factors bearing on it. Method: A 26-point questionnaire was circulated among parents with children up to 18 years of age online as well as offline, assessing age, education, urban vs. rural dwelling, previous Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccination status and the existing information regarding Covid-19 in children in previous and impending waves. Intention of the respondents to vaccinate their children immediately, wait-and-watch or not vaccinate at all and reasons leading to it were explored. The primary outcome was VH (wait-and-watch or not-opting-tovaccinate). Intention to vaccinate immediately was taken as reference. We used multinomial logistic regression to assess the association of outcome with age, gender, education, previous Covid-19 and vaccination status. Analysis was done using STATA-16 software.Results: Of 1102 respondents, VH was reported by 37.6%. Respondents who were older, females, unvaccinated, believed Covid-19 would not be more severe among children and those having safety concerns with vaccines were more likely to report VH. Vaccine related information obtained from healthcare workers was associated with the least VH. Rapid development and approval of vaccines did not affect VH. Conclusions: Age, gender, Covid-19 vaccination status of parents and perception of severity of Covid-19 among children were major determinants of VH in our study. Source of vaccine-related (mis)information concerns related to short and long-term safety of vaccines was significantly associated with VH © Open Access Article published under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY License