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Ticking child healthcare time bomb

EducationWorld March 05 | EducationWorld
Far from being the worker bees of a rapidly ageing global population, India’s children may well mature into sickly low productivity adults requiring life-long medical care — a scenario which has global doomsday implications. Summiya Yasmeen reports In perhaps the most damning indictment of post–independence India’s oft repeated claim of being a socialist welfare state, The State of the World’s Children 2005, a United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) global survey highlights this country’s utter neglect of child rights and abysmal welfare record. According to SWC 2005, a staggering 175 million children (below 18 years of age) in contemporary India are suffering utter poverty and deprivation. Of every 100 children born in India, only 35 births are registered, seven won’t make it to their first birthday (of whom five will die of malnutrition), 47 will remain underweight and only 53 will complete primary school. Girl children suffer more. With the ticking child healthcare time bomb, an estimated 43 percent of adolescent girls are anaemic and an alarming 31 percent drop out of school every year. The indicators of child deprivation as defined by the report, are lack of shelter, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, health and food insecurity, lack of access to a school, low infant mortality, malnutrition, child labour and child abuse (see box). India fares badly on each of these indicators of deprivation. For instance only 33.9 percent of its child population has proper shelter and 30 percent has access to sanitation facilities. Moreover only one in four of the 26.2 million children suffering chronic diarrhoea receive basic oral rehydration treatment resulting in millions of weak and malnutritioned children who metamorphose into physically and mentally stunted adults entering the national work force annually. With the Union and state governments combined spending a mere 0.9 percent of GDP (cf. USA’s 6.2 percent, Britain’s 6.3 percent and China’s 2 percent) on the nation’s ramshackle, corruption-ruined public healthcare system with children at the end of the receiving line, the oft-trumpeted advantage of India harbouring the world’s youngest population (415 million citizens are below the age of 18) is likely to be frittered away. Far from being the worker bees of a rapidly ageing global population, India’s children may well mature into sickly, low productivity adults requiring life-long medical care – a ticking child healthcare time bomb – a scenario which has global doomsday implications. SWC 2005 warns that the lives of 1.9 billion children living in developing countries of whom 415 million live in India, are under severe threat unless third world governments accelerate the processes required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In September 2000, 187 nations, including India, adopted the Millennium Declaration and identified a set of seven MDGs to be attained by all nations by 2015. The seven MDGs are: eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education; gender equality and empowerment of women; reduced child mortality; improved maternal health; a global plan to combat HIV/ AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and environmental sustainability. Says SWC 2005: “Failure to achieve the MDGs will have tragic
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