Sam Hassan*

Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics, Medicilnic City Hospital, Dubai

*Corresponding Author: Sam Hassan, Department of Paediatrics, Medicilnic City Hospital, Dubai.

Received: April 18, 2019; Published: July 01, 2019

Citation: Sam Hassan. “Current and Future Issues in Global Children Health and Care”. Acta Scientific Paediatrics 2.8 (2019):01-02.

International child health and care is one of the most imperative aspects for the future of mankind development. Children physical and mental health are affected by several complex factors such as politics, wars, demographic and racial inequities, vaccinations emerging problems, infectious diseases, evolving bacterial resistance, nutrition and environmental factors [1]. Despite gains in global health in the last 10 to 15 years, substantial work remained to be done to achieve the lowest acceptable targets about children health worldwide. Global child health and maternity such as the Millennium Development Goals (United Nation), 2000 which is signed by 189 countries, is only targeting survival while malnutrition, environmental factors, inequalities, effects of conflicts and wars, immigration, necessity of water and sanitation and other factors are absent.

Clean water and sanitation are basic necessity for everyone particularity children and it represent goal 6 in the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals [2]. However, currently more than 2 billion people living in areas with shortage and or risks of fresh clean water. It is expected around 2050 that quarter of the Earth population will have no access to fresh clean water or living in areas with contaminated water supply. More disappointing is that, the water and sanitation problems are affecting at least one in four of the Health Centre Facilities around the world. In a recent first comprehensive report worldwide by the UNICEF in April 2019, it has been found that 20% of the Health Care Centres around the world are lacking safe sanitation and clean water supplies [3] which compromise the health of at least 1.5 billion people especially children and childbirth. The lack of waste products proper disposal systems in the health care facilities can cause widespread infections and increase the already globally worsening issue of bacterial resistance. Lack or improper water and sanitation infrastructures recently resulted in epidemic diarrhoeal diseases in many countries. Food and water insecurity plus weakened medical and sanitation infrastructures with limited resources, producing epidemic levels of diseases especially in children. What is needed is more than just biomedical intervention and education. Prevention of diversities that leads to lack of clean water and proper sanitation is urgently needed.

Nutrition is very important especially for the first few years of life in children neuro-development and growth. In its Global Nutrition Report, 2018 the UNCEF reported that malnutrition is high and affect every country in the world [4]. Malnutrition is a world-wide issue that no country in the world can afford to overlook. At least one third of reproductive-age women are anaemic, while each year around 20 million babies are born underweight. On the other hand, obesity become problem affecting around 40% of some populations for which 500 billion US dollars spent every year in the USA alone to tackle the overweight and obesity. Undernutrition, however can cost nations 3.5 trillion US dollars per year. In West and Central Africa alone at least 6 million children are suffering from life-threatening sever acute malnutrition. Malnutrition is a global issue and an immediate action is needed by the governments all over the world, the stakeholders of all countries, the WHO, the UNICEF and other organisations.

In the last 10 to 15 years increasing number of parents declined vaccinating their children resulting in the return of some of the killer diseases and its mortalities such as Measles, mumps, whooping cough and diphtheria in many countries. Although parents decline for vaccinations contributed to false and unjustified link of vaccinations to diseases such as the MMR to the Autistic Spectrum disorder which is blown up by the media and internet, the problem seems to be more complex. From our anecdotal experience with parents who declined vaccinations there are several factors contributing. One of the most important factor is lack of proper communication with current parents who do not know enough about what used to be called the killer diseases. These disease in many countries became like ghosts we only can hear about them in grand-moms stories. Proper explanations about the vaccinations against killer diseased must be provided with evidence based supportive articles and risks against benefits issues with proper recent figures of outbreaks of Measles, Whooping cough, Diphtheria and increased numbers of TB. It is the nature of people when something not existed they don’t pay attention to it. We seem to have forgotten what is called the killer diseases and their complications due to non-existence for many decades. It is therefore education of parents and preparation of them from the antenatal period for the child vaccinations is very imperative. Health professionals should educate the parents about what these diseases are. Unlike people lived about 70 years ago, most people in our time don’t know what is whooping cough or TB or diphtheria or polio. Other issue is about BCG vaccination as in many countries BCG vaccination after birth is mandatory for the newborn babies. However, its proper follow up for scar formation that indicates effective response by health professionals is lacking. In a retrospective study done by us [5] we found that around 80% of BCG vaccinated babies had lack of follow up for BCG scar formation and hence Monteux test. This may result in false impression that the child is vaccinated and presented later on with sever TB complications [6]. This problem is global despite the WHO End of TB 2030 program. Countries required to act about this issue as we recommended in our study.

Wars and conflicts affect children in all aspect of health care. Hundreds of thousands of children die or become disabled each year due to wars. In wars all the above-mentioned factors such as water, sanitations, health systems, housing, vaccinations, and nutrition deteriorate. Other resultant impacts of wars are psychological and mental health problems, moral and social impacts, and children use as soldiers.

Exposures of children to war, violence, stress, and displacement could have serious long-term consequences. These include children and families living in the midst of conflict, in neighbourhoods of high crime, as well as refugees and migrants. Such considerations for improving the health of children using the basic principles of human rights should be global and not restricted.

Children are vulnerable group of society, we need to advocate for them worldwide for a better future for mankind.

Bibliography

1. The environment and health for children and their mothers (2018).
2. Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all; United Nation (2018).
3. WASH in health care facilities; Global baseline report. Authors: World Health Organization; UNICEF (2019).
4. Global Nutrition Report, Author UNICEF (2018).
5. Hanieh Tabatabaei and Sam Hassan. “Newborn BCG Vaccinations: Scar Formation and Tuberculin Conversion Rates: A Retrospective Study”. American Journal of Pediatrics1 (2019): 1-6.
6. Sam Hassan and Ali Hassan Abro. “Renal Tuberculosis in a 14-Years-Old Boy Presented as Pyrexia of an Unknown Origin (PUO): A First Case Report”. American Journal of Pediatrics2 (2018): 21-24.

Copyright: © 2019 Sam Hassan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.