Poverty is top health destroyer

from Stuff

Sick children are the product of poverty, and doctors can only treat what the whole community needs to help prevent, says Palmerston North paediatrician Jeff Brown.

Yesterdays' release by the national Paediatric Society of a report into children's health in New Zealand shows high rates of childhood skin infections, bronchiolitis, exposure to smoking and abuse.

"A lot of these are preventable things, and those in deprived households are the ones suffering."

Parents smoking around their children has been blamed for 500 babies under 2 being admitted to hospital each year, 15,000 episodes of childhood asthma, 27,000 GP visits and 1500 glue ear operations.

"In decile one and two schools, over 60 percent of Year 10 students live with parents who smoke.

"That's partly a health issue, but it's also a poverty issue. It's hard to kick the habit if you don't have a job or are subject to inter-generational abuse. You need to be supported to quit and be in a position, emotionally, to be able to."

Dr Brown said there had been huge success in reducing the impact of things that could be prevented with targeted awareness and vaccines - sudden infant death syndrome, road accidents and meningococcal disease.

"But the message is, if you are a child living in poverty, you suffer more."

Dr Brown said MidCentral Health was playing somewhere in the middle of the field with its community paediatric team linking up with other organisations to find and help children most at risk of preventable illness and injury.