Better medicines, new safety features help drop children’s death rates

Kansas City Star: Better medicines, new safety features help drop children's death rates

The death rate from heart disease among children is about half what it was in 1980, according to a compendium of recently released federal child-health statistics.

Also down by roughly half are children’s death rates from birth defects, cancer, pneumonia and flu, as well as injury-related child deaths from motor vehicle accidents, drowning, fires, falls, firearms and suffocation.

Death rates from all causes dropped 53 percent among children ages 1 to 4 and 45 percent among children ages 5 to 14. It adds up to survival for about 8,000 children a year who would have died in 1980.

“It’s just dramatic what has taken place. We are making tremendous progress,” said Kevin Kelly, pediatrician in chief at Children’s Mercy Hospital. “It’s very rewarding now to be in pediatrics.”

Better medicine and new safety measures get much of the credit. So does expanded government health insurance coverage for disadvantaged children, which gives them better access to medical care.

Add to that advances in the care of premature babies and of children with difficult chronic illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis.

Vaccinations also have played a major role, Kelly said.

…….

Parents deserve credit, too, for the lower death rates, said Frederick Rivara, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle who specializes in injury reduction. They are drinking and smoking less, for example, which reduces birth defects, fires and car crashes.

Only one leading killer — homicides — has not relented significantly.