Preventable child deaths

If today's obvious and affordable steps are not taken to protect the lives and the health and the normal growth of many millions of young children, then this will have less to do with lack of economic capacity than with the fact that the children concerned are almost exclusively the sons and daughters of the poor -- of those who lack not only purchasing power but also political influence and media attention.

In most highly developed countries, accidents have become the number one killer of children from a year old and upwards and there are reasons to suggest that, with the increasing demand for automation and sophisticated techniques, the number of accidents in childhood will continue to increase. Epidemiological understanding of the scale, nature, causes and consequences of childhood injuries and poisonings is constrained by the current lack of appropriate routine national morbidity data. Little Europe-wide research has been undertaken either on child injury prevention or on the economic gain that can be achieved by appropriate intervention.

Childhood afflictions are causes as well as symptoms of poverty. So is an international order that puts expensive weapons into the hands of poor governments and expects them to pay their debts.