The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Childhood Education and Comorbidities in Brazil: Challenges and Perspectives

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused numerous changes in the lives of individuals in all geographic regions, not only because of the speed of transmission, but also because the world is experiencing the fourth industrial revo lution, which increases the fluxes of data and materials throughout the network society. There is a global picture of changes over time, where pandemics have been gradually replaced by chronic diseases. And, in this context, the most drastic changes in health-disease patterns occur in children and young women and are associated with the demographic and socioeconomic fluctuations that underpin the modernization complex. The current pandemic offers an opportunity for reflection on the concept of health in the current and globalized world. It is up to the human being to definitely learn. In the early childhood education, during this period of the COVID 19 pandemic, it is necessary to deal with some special issues, in a short time: 1) the migration from onsite to remote teaching in the educational system; 2) to consider the current pandemic as a state of exception without forgetting the co-existence of other morbidities that had already been hardly affecting children over the years, such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes and 3) the urgent need on how to manage the time for education professionals to re-invent the teaching-learning process through digital tools. Once these challenges are reached, the maintenance of the health-education binomial will have great chances of being successful through joint actions both at the governmental level and by professionals in the area of education and the family of children.