Health

Poverty-related disease and injury in New Zealand children escalated with child poverty rates during the '90s.

 

These shocking "third world" diseases are still with us today, at epidemic levels, because one in five children still live in poverty - and because for about a decade nearly a third of children did. For a generation of children, the damage from poverty to their health and development will often last a lifetime.

The danger is that we have become accustomed to our high rates of disease, injury, disability and death. We can't afford to see them as the “normal” child health picture in New Zealand - and the rates are shocking in comparison with other OECD countries.

The most public face of poverty-related disease is meningococcal disease, which is especially common where people live in crowded homes. In South Auckland among Pacific children under one, about 1 in 300 have been struck with this disease.

However, our high rates of other preventable third world diseases are less well known.
They include rheumatic fever, pneumonia, chronic lung infection (bronchiectasis), gastroenteritis, ear disease, dental disease and serious skin infections (cellulitis). Children in poverty are many times more likely to be admitted to hospital for these diseases, compared to other children.

• More of our infants die than in many other similar countries, and our ranking in the world has fallen over the last 3 decades.
• We have high rates of death among Maori children, 90% of which are potentially avoidable.
• Our adolescents and young adults are dying excessively due motor vehicle crashes and suicide.
• Our dental health used to be the best in the world, but policy changes have plunged us downwards. Children and young people now have disturbingly high rates of missing and filled teeth.

Income is widely recognized as the most important determinant of health. It determines:

• the ability to purchase nutritional food
• the size, adequacy and location of housing; 11,000 state houses were sold off in the 1990s. When you are poor, and not in a state house, rental costs can be crippling, forcing families to shift often, or double up to survive

Income also determines:

• the ability to afford to heat the home, buy clothing, bedding, soap and towels
• the ability to pay for phone and transport
  
• the ability to pay for participation in sport
• the ability to pay for visits to the doctor and prescriptions
• the ability to pay for education. 

For around 250,000 New Zealand children in poverty it is not possible to afford all these things.