WHA adopts new strategic directions for child and adolescent health

EHM News Bureau - Mumbai

The World Health Assembly has given a powerful endorsement to new strategic directions for child and adolescent health. The strategy brings together crucial elements to reduce childhood deaths and long term disability. It also aims to reduce the 1.4 million adolescent deaths each year.

Last year, the number of children and adolescents who died was double the total number of adult deaths from Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined. In 2000, 10.8 million children under 5 years old died, over half of them from just five preventable communicable diseases and malnutrition.

Ninety nine per cent of these deaths are in developing countries. “This strong support and reinforced commitment by the Member States to strengthen child and adolescent health comes at a crucial time in our efforts to save the lives of millions of children,” says Dr Tomris Turmen, executive director of Family and Community Health at WHO.

“In recent years there has been a decrease in funding for child heath. This must be reversed. This expression of political will must be backed by more money and more human resources to accelerate development and scaling-up of effective child and adolescent health interventions at both global and country levels.”

In addition to highlighting the urgent need to reduce child mortality the strategy also focuses on adolescents. There are 1.2 billion adolescents world wide who face specific health threats such as HIV/Aids, tobacco and alcohol use, depression, suicide and violence. The impact of these health problems is dramatic. Each day among adolescents there are 6000 new HIV infections, 45,000 babies born, 40,000 young people who start using tobacco, 10,000 attempted suicided with 250 deaths, 1,400 deaths from injuries and 16,000 girls who are sexually abused.

An important new element of the strategy is the adoption of a life course approach to child and adolescent health. This recognises that the quality of life at early ages is important not only for immediate wellbeing, but also for health and development later in life and, given the crucial links between maternal, neonatal and child health, for the health of future generations.

Seven areas have been identified as priorities for future action:

• Health of mothers and newborns - the health and survival of the child, especially in early infancy, is intricately linked with the health of the mother.
• Nutrition for healthy development - better nutrition can break the vicious spiral of poor nutrition leading to ill-health.
• Preventable communicable diseases - can be drastically reduced through three activities: the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses, and preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV and reducing HIV among young people.
• Injuries - community-based interventions have reduced the rates of injuries in many countries but further work is required to broaden the range of effective interventions.
• Physical environment - can be improved by focusing on six priority issues: household water security, hygiene and sanitation, air pollution, disease vectors, chemical hazards and injuries.
• Health of adolescents - can be safeguarded when valuable relationships are established with trusted adults, and there are structures and boundaries around behaviours.
• Psychosocial development and mental health - affect almost 20 per cent of children who have one or more mental or behavioural problems.
• Children and adolescents difficult circumstances- including street children and adolescents subject to commercial exploitation or those living with disabilities need special attention.