Echoes of Global Silence: Is there protection and safety for Venezuelan children and adolescents?

As the crisis in Venezuela deepens, an increasing number of children urgently needs shelter, protection, and access to basic services, including food, medicine, clean water, and sanitation. Children and young people in transit are particularly at risk of criminal activity or being separated from their families. The consequences of the humanitarian crisis for children could be devastating for the country's future. The child labor problem was fueled by a mass migration of more than five million Venezuelans that turned many children into livelihoods for their families. The pandemic has aggravated risk factors for child labor. The work ranges from working in dumps to agricultural fields, adding that children in rural areas are more likely to depend on public assistance and are at greater risk of being recruited by gangs. Some Venezuelan women and girls are traveling for hours or days to cross the Colombian border and earn money as sex workers. The complex and multifaceted reality of international migration reveals enormous challenges that directly affect the lives of children and adolescents, especially the most vulnerable, and demand urgent responses from the constituted powers and civil society in the face of countless human rights violations those people experience.

High maternal mortality rates: Racial, geographic, and socioeconomic disparities in Brazil.

What are the harsh consequences of racism and our country's slavery past in the life of every black woman today? How does the current federal government reinforce the reproduction of structural sexism and racism during a pandemic? Hunger, domestic violence, femicide, informal work, unemployment, and political under-representation are issues that are urgently presented by the need for an anti-racist social transformation. Black women remain vulnerable to social inequalities. And in the pandemic, these inequalities are not only related to its management (contamination, death, and vaccination), but also its economic and social consequences.

The psychiatric and neuropsychiatric repercussions associated with severe infections of COVID-19 and other coronaviruses.

INTRODUCTION: It is known that viral infections are epidemiologically prevalent and some of them are harmful to the central nervous system (CNS) due to the development of neuropsychiatric syndromes which affect the cognitive, affective, behavioral and perceptual domains. OBJECTIVE: To carry out a comprehensive analysis of the psychiatric and neuropsychiatric repercussions of COVID-19 based on epidemiological, pathophysiological and clinical foundations observed in previous and recent pandemic events, and also to make a proposition about effective therapeutic interventions to help tackle this serious public health problem, more specifically in its neuropsychiatric developments. METHOD: This current literature review has utilized literature reserves and scientific search engines MEDLINE, EMBASE and Web of Science. The search terms included, "SARS-CoV-2", "etiology," "psychiatric and neuropsychiatric repercussions", "severe infections" "COVID-19". Specific choices of unique papers from each of the searches were identified. The inclusion criteria were relevance and availability of full-text. Papers were excluded on the basis of relevance and non-availability of full-text. Papers were identified in the general literature reserve as pertinent to the search terms. RESULTS: The main psychiatric and neuropsychiatric repercussions analyzed were depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, nonspecific neurological symptoms, delirium, cerebrovascular complications, encephalopathies, neuromuscular disorders, anosmia and ageusia. CONCLUSION: The psychiatric and neuropsychiatric symptoms of acute respiratory syndromes can appear during or after the infectious stage. Among the risk factors pointed out for such effects are the female gender, health professionals, presence of avascular necrosis and distressing pain.

Neurological manifestations of COVID-19 and other coronaviruses: A systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the main neurological manifestations related to coronavirus infection in humans. METHODOLOGY: A systematic review was conducted regarding clinical studies on cases that had neurological manifestations associated with COVID-19 and other coronaviruses. The search was carried out in the electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and LILACS with the following keywords: "coronavirus" or "Sars-CoV-2" or "COVID-19" and "neurologic manifestations" or "neurological symptoms" or "meningitis" or "encephalitis" or "encephalopathy," following the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. RESULTS: Seven studies were included. Neurological alterations after CoV infection may vary from 17.3% to 36.4% and, in the pediatric age range, encephalitis may be as frequent as respiratory disorders, affecting 11 % and 12 % of patients, respectively. The Investigation included 409 patients diagnosed with CoV infection who presented neurological symptoms, with median age range varying from 3 to 62 years. The main neurological alterations were headache (69; 16.8 %), dizziness (57, 13.9 %), altered consciousness (46; 11.2 %), vomiting (26; 6.3 %), epileptic crises (7; 1.7 %), neuralgia (5; 1.2 %), and ataxia (3; 0.7 %). The main presumed diagnoses were acute viral meningitis/encephalitis in 25 (6.1 %) patients, hypoxic encephalopathy in 23 (5.6 %) patients, acute cerebrovascular disease in 6 (1.4 %) patients, 1 (0.2 %) patient with possible acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, 1 (0.2 %) patient with acute necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy, and 2 (1.4 %) patients with CoV related to Guillain-Barré syndrome. CONCLUSION: Coronaviruses have important neurotropic potential and they cause neurological alterations that range from mild to severe. The main neurological manifestations found were headache, dizziness and altered consciousness.

People experiencing homelessness: Their potential exposure to COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Insufficient housing quality is associated with stress and mental health impacts. Crowding, pollution, noise, inadequate lighting, lack of access to green spaces, and other environmental factors associated with slums can exacerbate mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, violence, and other forms of social dysfunction. METHOD: The studies were identified using large-sized newspapers with international circulation. RESULTS: Experts say that people who sleep in shelters or on the streets already have lower life expectancy, suffer from addiction, and have underlying health conditions that put them at greater risk should they develop the virus. There are just so many competing and unmet needs, which makes it much harder for homeless to contend with all of this. If exposed, people experiencing homelessness might be more susceptible to illness or death due to the prevalence of underlying physical and mental medical conditions and a lack of reliable and affordable health care. Nevertheless, without an urgent solution, people experiencing homelessness will remain in limbo. CONCLUSIONS: Many people living on the streets already have a diminished health condition, higher rates of chronic illnesses or compromised immune systems, all of which are risk factors for developing a more serious manifestation of the coronavirus infection. Those suffering from mental illness may have difficulty in recognizing and responding to the threat of infection. Homeless people have less access to health care providers who could otherwise order diagnostic testing and, if confirmed, isolate them from others in coordination with local health departments.