Young girl in a hijab walks past flowers.

COVID-19’s hidden, heartbreaking toll: millions of orphaned children

An estimated 10.4 million children have lost a parent or caregiver, putting them at higher risk for poverty and every major cause of death—but it doesn’t have to end in catastrophe.

Nearly 10.4 million children worldwide have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19. Yuni Folani is one of them. Her 56-year-old father, Langlang Buana, died in June 2021 due to the coronavirus and kidney failure in Pasaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia.

There are always fresh flowers on Langlang Buana’s grave in the small town of Pasaman in the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. His youngest daughter, Yuni Folani, known as Ivo, passes the cemetery on her way to school. She visits so often that the petals she plucks from the bougainvillea in her front yard are still fragrant when she returns with a fresh bouquet.

Her father died of kidney failure while ill from COVID-19 last year. The younger of his two children, 14-year-old Ivo recalls she and her dad teased each other constantly and were inseparable. She wants to be a policewoman when she grows up, following in the steps of her father, who was a security guard. “I really miss

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