Save the Children says COVID-19 widens gap between rich and poor. (Photo: Internet)

London, September 10 (RHC)-- The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gap between rich and poor, boys and girls, according to a new global survey by Save the Children.

In the six months since the pandemic was declared, the most vulnerable children have disproportionately missed out on access to education, healthcare, and food, and suffered the greatest protection risks, the UK-based group said.

The survey, based on the experience of 25,000 children and their caregivers across 37 countries, found:

Two thirds of the children had no contact with teachers at all during lockdown, while eight in ten believed they had learned little or nothing since schools closed.

Some 93 percent of households that lost over half of their income due to the pandemic reported difficulties in accessing health services.

Violence at home doubled to 17 percent when schools were closed.

“To protect an entire generation of children from losing out on a healthy and stable future, the world needs to urgently step up with debt relief for low-income countries and fragile states, so they can invest in the lives of their children," Inger Ashing, Save the Children's CEO said in a statement.

"The needs of children and their opinions need to be at the centre of any plans to build back what the world has lost over the past months, to ensure that they will not pay the heaviest price.”