Millions of children could die of preventable diseases as health services are overtaxed.

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Migrant workers and their children waiting to board a train from Mumbai, India, to the state of Utter Pradesh last week.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

About 1.2 million children in more than 100 countries are at risk of dying from preventable causes every six months because health services are overstressed or curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, UNICEF said this week.

The figure is in addition to the 2.5 million children age 5 or younger who already die every six months in 118 low- and middle-income countries.

Put another way, the roughly 13,800 young children who die every day will be joined by more than 6,000 others whose lives could have been saved.

UNICEF said the estimate was based on a study published in the Lancet Global Health journal by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Under a worst-case scenario, the global number of children dying before their fifth birthdays could increase for the first time in decades,” Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, said in a statement.

The spillover effects of Covid-19 have also heightened the threat to expectant mothers in these countries. UNICEF said an additional 56,700 maternal deaths could occur within six months, in addition to the 144,000 deaths that already take place in the same countries in that time period.

The 10 countries that could have the largest number of additional child deaths, according to the estimate, are Bangladesh, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda.