What is child health poverty?

By Dr Sylvester Ikhisemojie 

Child health poverty refers to the disproportionate impact of poverty on the health and well-being of children. It does not mean or refer to a child who does not have money; it is far more profound than that.

Children living in poverty are more likely to experience a host of unpleasant events during their childhood especially in the pre-school age when they are most likely to be under the age of five years.

Growing up in poor family settings almost certainly guarantees a childhood full of deprivation in which poor nutrition and chronic hunger are guaranteed to be constant companions during the growing-up years.

The spectre of hunger is so profound that it sometimes pushes those children who survive the first five years of their lives into a pattern of petty crime and antisocial behaviour in an attempt to obtain what they think ought to come to them as children.

Such children typically suffer higher rates of infant mortality, they are often likely to also see very high rates of mortality among their members under the age of five years. Those who survive beyond these limits tend to experience developmental delays and learning disabilities.

Other associated issue with this difficult period of their early lives is the prospect of having limited access to healthcare and health insurance. The latter remains something of a novelty in many parts of the country.

To millions of other households particularly in the Northeast of the country, people have never even heard about health insurance. In many parts of this zone, healthcare facilities are far apart and few between.

The roads linking some of these facilities are in a sad state of disrepair while nearly every kilometre of any stretch of asphalt is peppered with bandits who constitute an ever-present danger to those who seek to commute between these facilities.

As it is in that part of the country, so it is in the Northwest and north-central states. With these kinds of encumbrances, there is an increased risk of coming down with various kinds of illnesses and infections.

However, poverty expectedly makes it far more difficult to diagnose and treat these conditions because there is a dearth of trained personnel in those health facilities, equipment of sorely lacking and the cost of both diagnosis and treatment are beyond reach. Even in those situations in which empirical treatment is offered in an attempt to cut down on the cost of treatment, it remains unaffordable to most.

These children are condemned to poor living conditions, as you can imagine, including inadequate housing and sanitation. In such typical houses, ventilation is poor and there is poor availability of clean potable water.

The cycle of poor hygiene is thereby reinforced, and the consequences are dire for all the children of such households. In such an environment, it is not hard to see that there is an atmosphere of chronic stress leading to the constant secretion of the stress hormone, cortisol that subsequently impacts the mental health condition of those children.

Chronic stress leads to such situations as anxiety and depression. They develop into their teenage years with grudges against their more prosperous neighbours with a propensity for violent behaviour and a life of crime.

Being individuals who emerged from childhood with significant deprivations and inadequate immunisation, or none at all, we begin to see children who live with an increased risk of accidents and injuries. For the majority of such children, they are condemned to a future of hopelessness where only the more amenable youths can be persuaded to take up a trade such as cobbling, trading, driving and vehicle mechanics.

There are many trades they can be made to learn and functioning local governments have a huge role to play in the grounding of such deprived children who live within their area of jurisdiction. The failure to leverage the importance of this vital segment of our government leads to an increased risk of abuse and neglect.

Child abandonment is an ever-present problem all over the country with many children wandering away from their parents at a very early age to go about begging, working as house helps and bus or lorry conductors.

Many of these children thereby travel hundreds of kilometres away from their unaware parents and can sometimes even be found in neighbouring countries. For those who remain, there is limited access to safe play areas and recreational spaces.

There is little or no education and many of these children are out of school where they should be learning about their environment and their role in it, their civic responsibilities, basic hygiene and how to leverage their knowledge to improve their health prospects.

Child health poverty can have long-term consequences, including, very importantly, reduced educational attainment which bears negative consequences for almost everything else to do with their lives. For the girl child, the risks are particularly fraught as she is most likely to end up with an unwanted teenage pregnancy or be shunted into a life of prostitution.

Lower economic productivity is a consequence of a suboptimal educational status. This unfortunately leads to the perpetuation of the cycles of poverty. Such deprivation of health benefits ultimately leads to increased healthcare costs because there is inadequate understanding to spot problems early on leading to delays in diagnosis and delays in treatment.

Treatment delays lead to an increase in costs especially when illnesses move from the spectre of prevention to one of cure. Addressing child health poverty, therefore, requires a comprehensive approach, including improving access to healthcare and health insurance.

In the current situation in which most of the country finds itself, these twin objectives can only be attained when the adverse security situation is brought under control. This is the only way in which the safe living conditions which we all want can be used to transform our various communities.

Achieving such an important step in the rebuilding effort of our country will help guarantee that farmers and their workers can safely return to their farmlands thereby helping to enhance our overall nutrition and food security.

Efforts such as these will be invaluable in supporting early childhood development, improved nutrition and education. When the various communities around the country appreciate the progress that has been made in one area, they are likely to make their efforts to encourage further community engagement and social support.