Currently in Australia, children as young as 10 years old can be arrested, held in police cells, taken before a magistrate and incarcerated in prison-like settings. Most children who are incarcerated are never convicted of a crime.
In the early decades of European settlement, Australia was free of some infectious diseases such as measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria which could not survive the long voyage to Australia. When these infections did arrive, as shipping times reduced, resistance was low and severe epidemics occurred, especially among children in the crowded slums of the cities, and among indigenous populations who were previously free of these infections.
It is well established that kids get less sick from COVID-19 than adults. However, what do we know about the extent infected children contribute to spreading the virus?
With some areas of Melbourne approaching their third week of lockdown and widespread community transmission, how do we make decisions about when it’s safe to reopen schools and what can we do to prevent kids from transmitting the virus? At Melbourne’s largest children’s hospital, we will hear what the commonest conditions are that are causing kids to get sick during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The effect of epidemics on pregnant women and newborns has often been neglected, so what do we know about the effects of COVID-19 in pregnancy and newborns?
As vaccines and other treatments are developed, should pregnant women also be included in clinical trials?
In low- and middle-income countries, disruption of essential maternity and newborn services may erode many of the gains made in maternal and child health over the past two decades.
In the era of Covid-19, the imperative to manage our finite healthcare resources has become greater than ever. RCH became a Choosing Wisely Champion Hospital in 2019 and is committed to providing the safest, high-quality, high-value care for our patients. Through Choosing Wisely, the RCH is part of a worldwide campaign challenging clinicians to think differently about the way we provide care, and to challenge the status quo when what we might normally do is no longer adding value to patient outcomes.
The exit strategy for COVID-19 is a vaccine. To stop this pandemic we may need to vaccinate a significant proportion of the entire global population of 7 billion people. Where are we up to with vaccine development? Who gets vaccinated? How to communicate the benefits of a novel, fast tracked vaccine when misinformation is already spreading.
COVID-19 has resulted in a flurry of high-stakes decision-making, at a public health level and an individual patient level, with significant impacts on how children are cared for, and how staff work. Many of these decisions have ethical dimensions.
COVID-19 is almost always a mild disease in children. Adults are much more likely to become very unwell or die than children. Why is this so?
Data from around the world consistently shows that COVID-19 is essentially a mild disease in children. However, the indirect effects of COVID-19 may have a more profound effect than the direct effects of the infection.
We will hear from 3 speakers on the global and clinical aspects, and the broader social, education and wellbeing impact of COVID-19 on children.
Social media holds considerable potential for health promotion activities, as it addresses some of the barriers in traditional methods of health communication by increasing accessibility, interaction and engagement with the community. Now in its fourth year, the RCH National Child Health Poll has evolved to increasingly use novel and innovative strategies to engage parents and carers via RCH digital channels.
