Stuart Dalziel: Cure Kids Chair of Child Health at Auckland University on the increase in children being hospitalised for preventable diseases

More children in this country are being hospitalised for preventable diseases.  

A new Cure Kids report reveals hospital admissions for respiratory, skin and rheumatic conditions, mental health issues and dental diseases, remain unacceptably high.  

It identifies social factors —like child poverty, housing conditions and inequitable access to care— as key drivers, and notes Māori and Pasifika children are disproportionately affected. 

Chair of Child Health at Auckland University Stuart Dalziel told Ryan Bridge that we need to look at which children we’re failing, and if there is a failing on the basis of race, we need to ask why. 

He said that the answer may not be specifically race-targeted policy, but there does need to be policy, and we need to be very clear about where there is failings so they can be corrected.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A new report in to the health of the children
in this country is a particularly grim read out this morning,
Cure Kids' fourth State of Child Health report has found
that PACIFICA children are one hundred and fifteen times more
likely and MALDI children forty six times more likely to
be hospitalized with acute dramatic fever compared to their European counterparts.

(00:21):
Hospitalization rates for respiratory conditions and children under one year
have increased by forty four percent over the past two decades.
Stuart Darzil is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health
Research and a University of alkand professor. He's with us
this morning. Good morning, Good morning, Ron, Thanks for being
with me. Can I first ask about this report. Why

(00:41):
have you decided to group the children by race.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I think it's important when we look at our statistics
across the health system that we look at groups where
we have not delivered good quality healthcare in the past
two and so that is grouping children by race and

(01:06):
ethnicity is quite useful for that, but also grouping children
according to their socioeconomic status as well, and that same
disparity that you just talked about in terms of race,
you see that same disparity across the report for a
number of conditions socioeconomic status as well.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
So what is driving these stats? Is it poverty or
is it race?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I think it is it's a combination of things. And
if we look at what are the foundations that good
health is built on. That's about adequate housing, that's about
adequate nutrition, that's about freedom from poverty. And we haven't
got those things sorted for all of our children. And

(01:57):
as a country, we need to be concentrated on those
big ticket items as well as the kind of individual
diseases we talked about in the report. In terms of
implementing specific health change as.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Well, the government has issued a director saying that we
need to focus on need rather than race. What particular
needs does this report say that we should focus on?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
So I think the report is quite clear in terms
of where the need be, where the need lies. So
the report looked at five key health conditions respiratory disease,
skin infections, rheumatic heart disease, dental disease, and mental health.
And you alluded to the change that we've seen over

(02:45):
the last two decades. You know, in our infants, the
rates of respiratory disease have increased by forty four percent
over the last two decades. If we look at dental
health and mental health disorders, the rates of the have
increased by twice what they were two decades ago. We've

(03:06):
reduced some things like skin infection and rheumatic heart disease,
but for skin infections our rates are still twice on
what they should actually be, and for rammatic heart disease,
we're seeing one sixtieth what we should be seeing is
one sixtieth of what we are actually seeing. So the
priority is these areas of need and that's what we

(03:28):
should be focusing on. And there are individual communities within
that that we should be focusing on. But ideally, if
we just focus on these five conditions and we get
it right, we're going to get health right for all
of New Zealand's children.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Would you agree then with the government that it is
more helpful to focus on housing, to focus on family income,
focus on poverty rather than divvying everything up by race.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Look, I think honestly, you've got to look at both strategies.
I think you've got to look at a lens to
say which children are we failing and if we see
that we are failing on the basis of race. We
then need to have strategies and we need to question
ourselves why are we failing on race? Now? The answers

(04:23):
to that may not be specifically race targeted policies, but
what we need is we need policy. We need to
be very clear about where we are failing and then
we can look at ways to improve that.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
All right, Stuart, thank you very much for your time
this morning. Stuart dziel Cure Kids Tier of Child Health
Research and University of Auckland professor. This new report out
this morning. It does make four particularly grim reading on
the state of our children's health. For more from News
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