Dear Ayesha,
You point out that, in conflict settings, 'most of the health service provision in these settings are led and carried out by colleagues who do not have child health expertise and who receive limited, if any, support to care for children'.
Indeed, many children have limited if any access to any kind of health services, and treatment may be limited to what the family and other community members can do. This would include the decision to seek medical care outside the community, which may itself entail risk. I would be interested to know what efforts exist, if any, to meet the information needs of such families, including telemedicine services. I am not aware of any research or even observations on these issues.
Thank you also for pointing us to the paper in PLOS Global Public Health https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36962911/ As you say this 'lays out an argument for a need to recognise humanitarian paediatrics as a specialty that is distinct from "humanitarian health", "global health" or "global child health" - and that this distinction is necessary to safely and effectively respond to the health risks and needs of children.'
The authors make a good argument. Even if humanitarian paediatrics were to be recognised as a specialty, the challenge will remain how to improve quality of care for the vast majority who do not have access to humanitarian paediatric professionals.
Many thanks, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org