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The rate of unintentional injuries for children in sub-Saharan Africa has reached 53.1 per 100,000, the highest for regions across all income levels. This paper reviews the relevant literature on the epidemiology of unintentional childhood injuries in the region, with an emphasis on the risk factors associated with it. Several demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors contributing to injuries in children have been documented for the main causes of injury. Despite the high burden, child injury prevention and control programs and policies are limited or non-existent in many countries in the region. Accurate data regarding these injuries across and within countries is incomplete. Population-based estimates and investigations into context-specific risk factors, safety attitudes, and behaviours are needed to inform the development of effective interventions.

Highlights COVID-19 lockdown left parents as the sole respondents for their children’s needs. We examine parents’ reports on the response their child received to their needs during the lockdown. Parents of older children reported less fulfillment of children’s needs. Societies must ensure pandemics do not create context for child neglect.

The Canadian government's recent cuts to healthcare coverage for refugee claimants has rekindled the debate in Canada about what medical services should be provided to individuals with precarious immigration status, and who should pay for these services. This article further explores this debate, focussing on the perceptions of healthcare workers in Montreal, a large multiethnic Canadian city. In April-June 2010, an online survey was conducted to assess how clinicians, administrators, and support staff in Montreal contend with the ethical and professional dilemmas raised by the issue of access to healthcare services for pregnant women and children who are partially or completely uninsured. Drawing on qualitative analysis of answers (n = 237) to three open-ended survey questions, we identify the discursive frameworks that our respondents mobilized when arguing for, or against, universal access to healthcare for uninsured patients. In doing so, we highlight how their positions relate to their self-evaluations of Canada's socioeconomic situation, as well as their ideological representations of, and sense of social connection to, precarious status immigrants. Interestingly, while abstract values lead some healthcare workers to perceive uninsured immigrants as "deserving" of universal access to healthcare, negative perceptions of these migrants, coupled with pragmatic considerations, pushed most workers to view the uninsured as "underserving" of free care. For a majority of our respondents, the right to healthcare of precarious status immigrants has become a "privilege", that as taxpayers, they are increasingly less willing to contribute to. We conclude by arguing for a reconsideration of access to healthcare as a right, and offer recommendations to move in this direction.