A study found PFAS substances in clothing, pillow protectors, bedding and furniture, some labeled ‘environmentally friendly’
Nearly 60% of children’s textiles labeled “waterproof”, “stain-resistant”, or “environmentally friendly” that were tested as part of a new study contained toxic PFAS substances known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment.
Among products checked were clothing, pillow protectors, bedding and furniture.
Continue reading...Exclusive: two Victorian councils limiting maternal and infant service, despite government lifting statewide pause enacted during Covid surge
There are fears health issues in babies could be going undetected as infant and maternal health checks remain suspended in parts of Melbourne’s west due to a shortage of workers.
Early childhood and maternal care experts warned the ongoing limits to the free service meant some parents were relying on blogs instead to find health information about their child’s development.
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Continue reading...Hearing parents say ‘It’s OK to feel scared and I’m here to listen’ might provide comfort
How should we deal with children’s anxiety over what’s happening in Ukraine?
I wonder if the question should be: how do we deal with our own? Our kids will pick up on how we are feeling and are likely to mirror our own emotive state. Even if you don’t mean to expose them to news, children will realise that something is going on. It may not concern younger children at all but those who are a bit older or old enough to have a smartphone may well be worried, and even work themselves up into a bit of a frenzy.
Continue reading...‘Misleading’ messages from $55bn-a-year industry are ‘unethical’, says report, which calls for plain packaging rules similar to tobacco
Countries should clamp down on the “aggressive” and “unethical” marketing of formula milk for babies, including forcing companies to sell products in plain packaging, a report by the World Health Organization and Unicef has said.
In research, commissioned 41 years after the global health community drew up guidelines aimed at regulating the industry, experts found that the marketing of formula had “no limits” and had become more “unregulated and invasive” in the digital age.
Continue reading...JCVI advised vaccinating the age group last week, but government is still ‘reviewing’ the evidence
Plans to offer Covid vaccinations to all children aged five to 11 have been delayed by the government because the jabs have not been deemed urgent.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) decided more than a week ago to expand the vaccination programme to all that age group and handed its advice to ministers.
Continue reading...Nearly half of newly diagnosed infants in 10 countries have drug-resistant HIV, study finds, underlining need for new alternatives
HIV drug resistance is on the rise, according to a new report, which found that the number of people with the virus being treated with antiretrovirals had risen to 27.5 million – an annual increase of 2 million.
Four out of five countries with high rates had seen success in suppressing the virus with antiretroviral treatments, according to the World Health Organization’s HIV drug-resistance report.
Continue reading...World Health Organization’s director general hails ‘historic day’ in fight against parasitic disease
The World Health Organization has recommended the widespread rollout of the first malaria vaccine, in a move experts hope could save tens of thousands of children’s lives each year across Africa.
Hailing “an historic day”, the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that after a successful pilot programme in three African countries the RTS,S vaccine should be made available more widely.
Continue reading...Governor DeSantis’s ‘soft-on-Covid approach’ makes the classroom too dangerous for immuno-compromised children
The only place nine-year-old Reefy Kinder wants to be is in school with her friends. She has missed so many lessons in six years battling a long-term gastro-intestinal condition, including more than 30 surgeries during many months as an inpatient at Orlando’s Arnold Palmer children’s hospital, that she figures she has a lot to catch up on.
Standing in her way, according to Reefy and her mother, Jamie, are Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and his handpicked new state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, an opponent of mask mandates who believes vaccines are no more effective than eating healthily and losing weight in the fight against Covid-19.
Continue reading...In ANU study parents report negative effect of Covid and prolonged lockdown has become ‘a lot worse’ than earlier in pandemic
After finishing her final year of high school in 2019, Amy’s* daughter had dreams of leaving Geelong, in Victoria, to travel to the UK for a working holiday using money saved from her waitressing job.
Then the pandemic and lockdowns hit.
Continue reading...A study in Burkina Faso and Mali suggests combining anti-malarial drugs and vaccination could reduce deaths and hospitalisations
A trial combining vaccinations and prevention drugs has substantially lowered the number of children dying of malaria in two African countries, according to researchers.
The results of the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, have been hailed as “very striking”, especially at a time when decades-long progress on combating malaria has stalled in some countries.
Continue reading...Hong Kong research suggests less time outdoors and more doing ‘near work’ accelerates short-sightedness
Spending more time indoors and on screens because of Covid restrictions may be linked to an increased rate of short-sightedness in children, researchers say.
The study, which looked at two groups of children aged six to eight in Hong Kong, is the latest to suggest that lockdowns and other restrictions may have taken a toll on eyesight: data from more than 120,000 children of a similar age in China, published earlier this year, suggested a threefold increase in the prevalence of shortsightedness, or myopia, in 2020.
Continue reading...We must apply our own home-grown initiatives if we are to curb abuses of Africa’s most vulnerable
Of all the unspeakable injustices suffered by Africa’s children – and I’ve witnessed many – violence is surely the worst because it is almost entirely preventable. Africa’s children suffer many hardships, including poverty, hunger and disease. Violence against children is avoidable, yet young people in Africa, especially girls, continue to live with sexual violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, forced labour, corporal punishment and countless other forms of abuse.
After decades spent trying to improve young people’s life chances, I had hoped to see at the very least a significant reduction in violence that threatens children. It is now 31 years since the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and we have seen some governments putting into place laws and policies aimed at ending violence against children. There have also been efforts, though insufficient, towards eradicating female genital mutilation and child marriage, which cause untold lifelong suffering.
Continue reading...Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns
A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.
The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.
Continue reading...Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds
The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.
According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.
Continue reading...The perceived wisdom has been that children do not suffer severely from the virus. Yet they are now in Brazil, Indonesia and India
Emergency physician and leading epidemiologist in Brazil, Dr Fatima Marinho, is seeing symptoms of Covid-19 in children that starkly contrast with the message that has been relayed globally throughout the pandemic that children do not appear to suffer severely from the virus.
Severe muscle aches, diarrhoea, coughing, abdominal pain and hospitalisation – all of these are happening to children with Covid-19 in Brazil, Marinho says.
Continue reading...Children’s health advocates urged Mark Zuckerberg to abandon the plan citing the negative effects of social media on children
An international coalition of children’s health advocates has called on Facebook to abandon its plans to build an Instagram product for kids, citing harm to teens from excessive use of social media.
The campaign comes after Buzzfeed broke the news in March that Facebook seeks to build an Instagram product for people under the age of 13. The company currently requires users to be 13 years or older to create an account.
Continue reading...Life-saving techniques fall out of favour on maternity wards in developing countries over Covid fears
Small and sick babies are at increased risk of dying due to disruptions in care caused by coronavirus, a survey of health workers across 62 mainly developing countries has found.
Every year, 2.5 million babies die within 28 days of birth, and more than 80% of them have low birth weight. A technique for premature and small babies known as kangaroo mother care (KMC), involving early prolonged skin-to-skin contact with their mothers and breastfeeding, can help reduce mortality.
Continue reading...Parents whose only hope was finding foreign sponsorship or a clinical trial are now looking for homegrown breakthroughs
For three years, Vidya tried to find the cause of her son’s recurrent fevers and low cognitive development. When she found out, she was devastated.
Vineeth, 10, has an incurable illness – mucopolysaccharidosis type 2 – that affects his organs. Afflicting just one in a million, the enzyme-replacement medication that can help stop the illness getting any worse costs £100,000 a year, far beyond the reach of even a wealthier Indian parent.
Continue reading...