Impacts of overlapping climate disasters and pandemics on childcare services

Objective To estimate the impacts of the overlap of climate disasters and pandemic on childcare services. Methods This is a descriptive and analytical study with an ecological and cross-sectional design. The numbers of services provided to children under one year of age, in which the problem or condition assessed involved diagnoses related to childcare between 2016 and 2022 in Primary Care in the municipality of Petrópolis in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were used. Petrópolis was hit by a climate disaster caused by rains that resulted in widespread destruction and 248 deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2022. The rates of services (/thousand) in the first six months of the overlap were compared with the rates before the climate disasters and pandemic and with the rates in the first six months of the pandemic alone, using percentage differences and average monthly rates with their respective 95% confidence intervals in a control diagram. Results A total of 45,819 childcare services were studied. Monthly care rates in the month of the climate disaster and the previous month, when heavy rains were already occurring, fell by 46.4% and 37.2%, respectively, compared to the period before the pandemic. These reductions were only lower than in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when reductions of 79.3%, 57.8% and 42% were observed, also compared to the period before the pandemic. Conclusion The overlapping climate disasters and the pandemic had an impact on childcare services, increasing barriers to children’s access to preventive health care during the pandemic.