Nakaike Tomomi, Nguyen Dung Anh, Makram Abdelrahman M, Elsheikh Randa, Hassani Mohamed, Reda Abdelrahman, Trieu My Duc Thao, Huy Nguyen Tien, Hirayama Kenji
School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Japan.
Online Research Club (www.onlineresearchclub.org), Nagasaki, Japan.
Child Care Health Dev. 2025 Jul;51(4):e70105. doi: 10.1111/cch.70105.
COVID-19 caused the interruption of child protection services and economic/psychological burdens on parents. Therefore, in this systematic review and meta-analysis (SR/MA), we aimed to identify the impact of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic on physical and sexual violence and neglect against children by investigating the change in the prevalence of these events before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The protocol of this study was registered in PROSPERO with the registration number CRD42022377660. We included any studies eligible for meta-analysis comparing physical and sexual violence and neglect against children before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eleven electronic databases were systematically searched in March 2022. The meta-analysis was conducted using STATA, pooled odds ratios were calculated and subgroups by countries and sex of children (when possible) were analysed.
A total of 11 publications were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, we found no significant evidence to support that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the prevalence or proportion of the three types of violence against children, even after segregating the data to the country or sex levels.
Overall, our analysis revealed no significant change in physical and sexual violence, as well as neglect against children before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the majority of data sources being hospital records and child protection services. More self-reported studies should be performed, especially in low- and middle-income countries, for a better understanding of child abuse and neglect around the world.
新冠疫情导致儿童保护服务中断，给父母带来经济/心理负担。因此，在本系统评价和荟萃分析（SR/MA）中，我们旨在通过调查新冠疫情之前和期间这些事件发生率的变化，确定全球新冠疫情对针对儿童的身体暴力、性暴力和忽视行为的影响。
本研究方案已在国际前瞻性系统评价注册库（PROSPERO）注册，注册号为CRD42022377660。我们纳入了所有符合荟萃分析条件的研究，这些研究比较了新冠疫情之前和期间针对儿童的身体暴力、性暴力和忽视行为。2022年3月，我们系统检索了11个电子数据库。使用STATA进行荟萃分析，计算合并比值比，并分析国家和儿童性别（如有可能）亚组。
共有11篇出版物纳入荟萃分析。总体而言，我们没有发现显著证据支持新冠疫情影响了针对儿童的三种暴力行为的发生率或比例，即使将数据按国家或性别水平进行分类。
总体而言，我们的分析显示，在新冠疫情之前和期间，针对儿童的身体暴力、性暴力以及忽视行为没有显著变化，大多数数据来源为医院记录和儿童保护服务。为了更好地了解全球范围内的虐待和忽视儿童情况，应开展更多自我报告研究，尤其是在低收入和中等收入国家。
