Bill Gates said in his annual report that in 25 weeks in 2020, we lost 25 years of social progress. It's terrible what's happening, but it hasn't only been the number of children who are out of school. There are still 250 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who were in school at the beginning of the year but are not in school now. For the first time in 60 years, the number of children under the age of five who will die from preventable causes is going to go up. We have had 60 years of progress, and this is changing that.
We've had an incredible loss of social progress. As my colleague from Save the Children Canada was saying, what's happening to girls through all of this, and women, is horrendous.
The way to stop it is to first stop the pandemic. That's why things like the Covax facility are so important. We need the effort to get out. At UNICEF we're responsible for syringes. Next year we'll have to get two billion syringes. We've already pre-ordered 500 million syringes to be in place by the end of the year, but then there are the disposal boxes for the syringes.
Think of all of that. We're talking about how difficult it is in Canada. Think about what it's going to be like to reach the poorest places in the world. We know that if we don't stop it everywhere, we won't be able to stop it for us.