The United Nations has warned that the health of the children all over the world is in serious danger due to reasons such as climate change, consuming fast food, smoking and other reasons, stressing that there’s no country is doing enough to protect its future generation.
In a report published this morning in the British Medical Journal - The Lancet- that though some improvement has been there in the health of kids and teenagers over the last two decades, the unprecedented level of technological progress, however, assumes a reversible track could be there.
According to the UN-backed report which was prepared by independent 40 experts, from all over the world, children in Norway, South Korea and the Netherlands had the best chance at survival and well-being thanks to good healthcare, education and nutrition.
But a ranking of countries by per-capita carbon emissions put those and other rich nations, including the United States and Australia, close to the bottom on that measure, as major contributors to global health threats driven by climate change.
“Countries need to overhaul their approach to child and adolescent health, to ensure that we not only look after our children today but protect the world they will inherit in the future,” said former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, co-chair of the international commission that produced the report.
And the heating up of the planet and damage to the environment, among other stresses, meant every child faced an uncertain future, the report noted.
“Climate disruption is creating extreme risks from rising sea levels, extreme weather events, water and food insecurity, heat stress, emerging infectious diseases, and large-scale population migration,” the report said.
“The biggest inequity that we need to confront today is the inequity (of) climate change,” Narain told journalists.
The “sustainability” part of the index ranks countries on how their per-person emissions compare with a 2030 target giving a two-thirds chance of keeping global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
Reuters reported that of the top 25 countries with the best score on emissions, all but two were African. That contrasts starkly with the “flourishing” part of the index, where many African nations did badly on children’s health, education, nutritious food and protection from violence.
Another key threat identified was exploitative marketing practices that push fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco at children, increasingly through social media channels.
Report author Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainability at University College London, said children’s data was being harvested via online games and sold to big technology firms which then target youth with advertising.
“This is totally unregulated,” he said. “We think that there needs to be much greater attention to the protection of children around the world.”
"They should also be placed at the center of efforts to achieve the global development goals agreed in 2015."
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