The lead page on Child health at WHO notes:
'More than half of child deaths are due to conditions that could be easily prevented or treated given access to health care and improvements to their quality of life.'
https://www.who.int/health-topics/child-health#tab=tab_1
I would like to invite discussion about child deaths where failures in basic health care, particularly in the home and community, have contributed to avoidable deaths.
We have noted, for example, that parents worldwide continue to have the false and dangerous belief that one should stop giving fluids to a child with diarrhoea, thereby tragically increasing the risk of death to their child. And we have noted that many primary health workers incorrectly prescribe antibiotics rather than oral rehydration to such children, if they survive to reach a health worker. Similar deficiencies are seen for other killer diseases such as pneumonia.
Can anyone comment from their experience, or share relevant publications, that help us understand how a lack of basic healthcare information can contribute to avoidable suffering and death? How can we better meet the information needs of families and primary health workers?
An inability to access and apply relevant, reliable healthcare information is only one factor in low-quality care, and no-one has quantitatively assessed its contribution. It could be argued that low-quality care is almost synonymous with a failure to apply reliable healthcare information in any given context. Certainly, it is a major factor and should in theory be relatively straightforward to address.
A Lancet paper by Kruk et al 2018 estimated that up to 8 million people a year (of all ages) were dying due to low-quality care, but I could not find data specific to children. Does anyone have estimates on deaths due to low-quality care among children?
Currently, we have good data on medical causes of death (diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria...). We need comparable data on healthcare-related causes of death.
Best wishes, Neil
Let's build a future where children are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information - Join CHIFA (Child Healthcare Information For All): http://www.hifa.org/forums/chifa-child-health-and-rights
CHIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA campaign (Healthcare Information For All) and assistant moderator of the CHIFA forum. Twitter: @hifa_org FB: facebook.com/HIFAdotORG neil@hifa.org
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