Despite being one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world, the United States has witnessed a serious uptick in child and adolescent mortality of late.
A new study has concluded that mortality rates among children and teenagers in the United States increased by about 20 percent between 2019 and 2021.
Homicide, suicide, drug overdoses and car accidents were identified as primary reasons for this upsurge among Americans aged between 10 and 19. The study authors also pointed out that COVID-19 “contributed little” to this trend.
The study was carried out by doctors affiliated to the Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Washington.
In this context, Dr. Yolanda Hancock, a board-certified pediatrician and public health expert who was not involved in the study, told Sputnik that the worrying situation is exacerbated by an apparent lack of proper pediatric care in the United States.
According to her, the current state of affairs in US pediatrics formed thanks to several factors, one of them being the difference in healthcare reimbursement rates for children and adults.
She recalled how, “during and after the COVID,” pediatric emergency rooms and hospital wards were being completely shut down because, aside from the “need for space” during the pandemic, some hospitals realized that they “get more money by bringing more adults in who are sicker” and deemed it more profitable to “focus on adults” rather than “bring pediatric care back in.”
Hancock also pointed out that pediatric care requires specialists with proper training able to recognize “pediatric issues” and know how to treat them, and proper equipment such as, for example, the “appropriately sized breathing tubes and masks” to intubate a child.
Last but not least, Hancock noted, is the fact that “many pediatric hospitals are being shut down and standalone hospitals aren’t offering pediatric inpatient services, there’s no place for children to be transferred once they are stabilized in an emergency department.”
From the public health policy point of view, Hancock argued that children in the United States are neither valued nor prioritized.
She insisted that the US federal government, which “provides the coverage for children who are under-insured or not insured” through Medicaid – a program that provides health insurance for Americans with limited income – should improve the reimbursement rates for children, “because the majority of children who end up showing up in the department usually are insured by Medicaid.”
Furthermore, Hancock added, every emergency department and hospital that provides emergency services and receives “federal dollars” should be required to have both the staff “trained to navigate through pediatric emergencies” and the equipment to deal with such emergencies.
