Peru has been battered by Covid-19. It has the highest known death toll in the world per capita. But behind the figures there’s another hidden pandemic. By the end of April 2021 around 93,000 children had lost a father, mother, grand-parent, or other primary caregiver to the virus - that’s one in every hundred children. For Assignment, Jane Chambers travels to Lima to meet the families struggling to cope. The immediate urgency of the health crisis is masking a much deeper malaise; that of a generation of children mentally and physically scarred by loss and poverty.

Reported and produced by Jane Chambers
Editor: Bridget Harney

(Image: Jhoana Olinda Antón Silva and her children in their home at the shrine they built for their father who died of Covid-19. Credit: Paola Ugaz)