Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Stuart Dalziel: Cure Kids Chair of Child Health at Auckland University on the increase in children being hospitalised for preventable diseases

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Stuart Dalziel: Cure Kids Chair of Child Health at Auckland University on the increase in children being hospitalised for preventable diseases · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A new report in to the health of the children
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: in this country is a particularly grim read out this morning,
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  Speaker 1: Cure Kids' fourth State of Child Health report has found
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  Speaker 1: that PACIFICA children are one hundred and fifteen times more
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  Speaker 1: likely and MALDI children forty six times more likely to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: be hospitalized with acute dramatic fever compared to their European counterparts.
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  Speaker 1: Hospitalization rates for respiratory conditions and children under one year
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  Speaker 1: have increased by forty four percent over the past two decades.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Stuart Darzil is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health
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  Speaker 1: Research and a University of alkand professor. He's with us
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  Speaker 1: this morning. Good morning, Good morning, Ron, Thanks for being
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  Speaker 1: with me. Can I first ask about this report. Why
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  Speaker 1: have you decided to group the children by race.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's important when we look at our statistics
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  Speaker 2: across the health system that we look at groups where
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  Speaker 2: we have not delivered good quality healthcare in the past
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: two and so that is grouping children by race and
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  Speaker 2: ethnicity is quite useful for that, but also grouping children
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: according to their socioeconomic status as well, and that same
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  Speaker 2: disparity that you just talked about in terms of race,
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  Speaker 2: you see that same disparity across the report for a
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  Speaker 2: number of conditions socioeconomic status as well.
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  Speaker 1: So what is driving these stats? Is it poverty or
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  Speaker 1: is it race?
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  Speaker 2: I think it is it's a combination of things. And
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  Speaker 2: if we look at what are the foundations that good
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  Speaker 2: health is built on. That's about adequate housing, that's about
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  Speaker 2: adequate nutrition, that's about freedom from poverty. And we haven't
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  Speaker 2: got those things sorted for all of our children. And
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  Speaker 2: as a country, we need to be concentrated on those
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  Speaker 2: big ticket items as well as the kind of individual
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  Speaker 2: diseases we talked about in the report. In terms of
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  Speaker 2: implementing specific health change as.
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  Speaker 1: Well, the government has issued a director saying that we
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: need to focus on need rather than race. What particular
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  Speaker 1: needs does this report say that we should focus on?
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  Speaker 2: So I think the report is quite clear in terms
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  Speaker 2: of where the need be, where the need lies. So
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  Speaker 2: the report looked at five key health conditions respiratory disease,
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  Speaker 2: skin infections, rheumatic heart disease, dental disease, and mental health.
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  Speaker 2: And you alluded to the change that we've seen over
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  Speaker 2: the last two decades. You know, in our infants, the
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  Speaker 2: rates of respiratory disease have increased by forty four percent
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  Speaker 2: over the last two decades. If we look at dental
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  Speaker 2: health and mental health disorders, the rates of the have
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  Speaker 2: increased by twice what they were two decades ago. We've
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  Speaker 2: reduced some things like skin infection and rheumatic heart disease,
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  Speaker 2: but for skin infections our rates are still twice on
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  Speaker 2: what they should actually be, and for rammatic heart disease,
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  Speaker 2: we're seeing one sixtieth what we should be seeing is
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  Speaker 2: one sixtieth of what we are actually seeing. So the
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  Speaker 2: priority is these areas of need and that's what we
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  Speaker 2: should be focusing on. And there are individual communities within
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  Speaker 2: that that we should be focusing on. But ideally, if
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  Speaker 2: we just focus on these five conditions and we get
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  Speaker 2: it right, we're going to get health right for all
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  Speaker 2: of New Zealand's children.
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  Speaker 1: Would you agree then with the government that it is
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  Speaker 1: more helpful to focus on housing, to focus on family income,
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  Speaker 1: focus on poverty rather than divvying everything up by race.
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  Speaker 2: Look, I think honestly, you've got to look at both strategies.
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  Speaker 2: I think you've got to look at a lens to
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  Speaker 2: say which children are we failing and if we see
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  Speaker 2: that we are failing on the basis of race. We
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  Speaker 2: then need to have strategies and we need to question
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  Speaker 2: ourselves why are we failing on race? Now? The answers
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  Speaker 2: to that may not be specifically race targeted policies, but
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  Speaker 2: what we need is we need policy. We need to
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  Speaker 2: be very clear about where we are failing and then
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  Speaker 2: we can look at ways to improve that.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Stuart, thank you very much for your time
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  Speaker 1: this morning. Stuart dziel Cure Kids Tier of Child Health
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  Speaker 1: Research and University of Auckland professor. This new report out
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  Speaker 1: this morning. It does make four particularly grim reading on
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  Speaker 1: the state of our children's health. For more from News
• 4:51
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• 4:57
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