"Newspapers and pediatric generated information coming these days bring, once more, the issue of what is relevant in Child Health." This puts the question of how can that be expressed in our programs. The actual drop of living standards for children should concern us deeply as it is reflected in child health. (See Pediatrics & Child Health October 2001 Vol 6 No. 8 in Advocacy -Child poverty, health and health care use in Canada) It is distributed to all pediatricians and after one month of its appearance it is downloadable from www.cps.ca http://www.cps.ca. The recent decision of the Ontario Government to scratch the Early Childhood Education program to half (and likely altogether) and the appalling statistics about child poverty (and impact on health and health care) should make us look with care into the psychosocial determinants of health. Meantime, 2.2 billion dollars will be given as an additional tax break to the corpora te sector. I thought both the Federal and Provincial Governments had promised to give priority to children and the poor... The book of the CICH "The Health of Canada's Children" (available at our bookstore for $50 or for less from their site: www.cich.ca and the UNICEF 2002 report downloadable free from http://www.unicef.org/sowc02/ http://www.unicef.org/sowc02/ are a must and should be reviewed with our residents and used to set new educational goals.
José Venturelli
Professor of Pediatrics
McMaster University
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