‘Reach the children being left behind’: WHO official eyes future of pediatric care

A WHO official speaking at the St. Jude/PIDS Pediatric Infectious Diseases Research Conference encouraged health care communities to “reach the children being left behind.”

“We are still seeing a lot of child mortality that is preventable,” said Wilson Milton Were, MBChB, medical officer in WHO’s Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Aging. “And I think the emphasis has been made and we know what to do, but we are just not doing it right at scale to prevent that.”

He said that in less than 19 years, Africa and East Asia will have the world’s largest population of children.

“That has a lot of implications as we move forward,” Were said. “[This] is also going to add, perhaps, a double burden, both of infectious diseases and noncommunicable diseases, and that really calls for rethinking of the health systems in order to actually be able to respond.”

Were said there has been “a lot of progress” in terms of child and adolescent health but that many children still die in the first month of life.

“For the post-neonatal period, pneumonia and diarrhea still remain the major causes of death, and all these conditions are treatable,” Were said. “We are seeing the numbers of premature babies being born increasing, and we will need a lot of redesign and upgrading of the health systems in order for us to deal with this mortality.”

He said countries with high mortality rates should expect a transition in the causes of under-5 mortality among children.

“As the proportion of infectious diseases goes down, noncommunicablev conditions are going to go up,” he said. “So it is very important to start looking at how they can establish systems that will exist over a long time.”

Were also emphasized a need to address “the growing gap between the rich and the poor.”

“It will also be necessary that we improve socioeconomic status and strengthen health systems by investing in primary care and ensuring universal health coverage, and of course, expanding education and empowering countries to move forward,” Were continued.

While encouraging local interventions, Were said some countries will require more care than others.

“We should try to reach the children being left behind,” Were said. “We should strengthen primary health care because that is required to [do] this, but we really need effective partnerships ... because we don't think that these countries on their own will be able to surmount the problems they are facing today.”