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NEW THIS SUNDAY: TWO ON HEALTH INEQUALITY AMONG CHILDREN

Tuesday, 1st of October 2013

• NEW THIS SUNDAY: TWO ON HEALTH INEQUALITY AMONG CHILDREN
  
• CLOSING THE KILLER GAP IN CHILDRENS HEALTH INEQUALITY

The Lancet, Volume 382, Issue 9896, Page 914, 14 September 2013

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

 

Original Text

The Lancet

Globally, the pervasive disparities in the health and wellbeing of children are detrimental not only to the poorest and most vulnerable children and their families and communities, but also to the whole of society. To eliminate such disparities, three major questions need to be answered. How wide is the health gap? What are the underlying and driving factors? What can be done?

The report, The Killer Gap: A Global Index of Health Inequality for Children, released by World Vision last week, tries to provide the answers. 176 countries around the world are ranked according to the size of the gap between those who have greatest access to health education, awareness, prevention, and treatment, and those who have most barriers to good health, using the four indicators of life expectancy, personal cost of using health services, adolescent fertility rate, and coverage of health services. France and Chad are at the top and the bottom of the list, respectively. The index shows that the greatest gaps persist in the poorest and most fragile contexts and countries, but that a countrys wealth alone does not necessarily guarantee a small health gap, given that the USA, for example, sits only at 46 on the index. There are many other factors beyond poverty—above all, that health systems fail to reach those who suffer most from health inequalities, including children unregistered at birth, children living with disabilities, orphaned children, indigenous children and ethnic minorities, refugees and displaced children, and child labourers and trafficked children. To ensure that these children are no longer invisible or uncounted, better social and economic policies have an important part to play. The report rightly calls for greater attention to health inequalities at the highest political level, prioritisation of child and maternal health in the post-2015 development agenda, and improvement of data collection.

Every child has the right to reach his or her full potential for health and development. Ahead of the UN General Assembly, where the post-2015 development agenda will be discussed, it is timely to remind advocates of child health, together with health professionals (particularly paediatricians), of these remaining inequalities, and to urge collective efforts to close the gap.

• THE KILLER GAP

 

A GLOBAL INDEX OF HEALTH INEQUALITY FOR CHILDREN

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY BELOW; FULL TEXT IS AT

http://www.worldvision.ca/ABOUTUS/Media-Centre/Documents/KillerGapreport.pdf

 

We are making remarkable progress in child health. As an international

community of families, civil society, corporations, governments, the UN and

organisations like World Vision, we should celebrate the success weve seen in

the past 20 years, reducing the number of preventable deaths of children under

the age of five: from 12 million children in 1990, to nearly seven million in 2011.

But the number is still far too high. Every child lost is a tragedy for their family, community and country. And every child lost is a reminder that we have a lot of work left to do.

 

As we make the final push towards the deadline for the Millennium Development

Goals (MDGs), we rightly feel an urgency to do more, to do everything we

can to understand – and take action on – the reasons why we are still so far

off reaching the MDG targets that UN member states set themselves in 2000.

Put simply, we have failed to reach the poorest and most vulnerable children.

World Vision has produced the Global Health Gap Index to try and do

exactly this; to analyse where and why children are still dying, and to outline

what can be done. This Index demonstrates that despite global progress in

reducing the number of deaths of children under the age of five, some of the

poorest children in the world are still not being reached. It is a timely and

stark reminder that the gap between those who have good access to lifesaving

health services and those who do not remains unacceptably large.

 

Nisha Das, a confident and inspiring 15-year-old from India, is a powerful

reminder of why inequity matters: for the children whose lives are being

saved, and the millions more who we need to concentrate on reaching.

“I feel sad to see children all over the world are still not treated with dignity

and equality in spite of the world moving so forward. It is a paradox. Many

children are not educated and not included in societies because they are

poor, disabled or invisible in society,” Nisha told the UN when she spoke

at an inequality debate recently. “Children need the same opportunities

whether they are rich or poor, boys or girls, disabled or not.”

 

With little more than 800 days until the MDGs deadline, at World

Vision we are working with families and communities to amplify

voices like Nishas. Join us at www.childhealthnow.org to urge leaders

to do what they can to close the gap in child health:

 

• Ensure that greater attention at the highest political level is

given to closing the health gap for women and children.

• Address the problem of missing data for vulnerable groups by

establishing routine data collection systems locally, nationally

and internationally to measure the health gap.

• Engage and empower families and communities in data collection

and in the planning, delivery and review of health services.

• Prioritise child and maternal health in the post-2015 development

agenda, through the inclusion of ambitious goals to end preventable

child and maternal deaths and significantly reduce stunting.

 

Andrew Hassett

Child Health Now Campaign Director

World Vision International