Safeguard Children’s Health, Work Together on Prevention

On July 5, The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association updated child COVID-19 cases data that in the past week from 6/23/22 to 6/30/22, 75,999 child COVID-19 new cases were reported and children represented 12.6% (75,999/601,138) of the weekly reported cases. Over two weeks, from 6/16/22 to 6/30/22, there was a 1% increase in the cumulated number of child COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic (143,607 cases added).

Meanwhile children’s health is also a trending topic in Europe. According to a report from ADNKRONOS, the second largest news agency in Italy,  on June 28 – Rome, Creating new guiding lines for prevention and the cure for a new disease affecting one of the weakest groups of the population, children. The disease, as happened with the phenomenon of “long Covid”, documented by many medical publications, could cause many other problems also after the cure. This is the aim of today’s meeting about “New hepatitis, pediatric working together for prevention” aired on the Zoom platform.

The event has been organized and promoted by Etica, a third-sector entity that supports and implements socially beneficial projects in defence of human and civil rights, of children in particular.

The conference, hosted by Valentina Arcovio, a scientific journalist at 30 Science Communications, was attended by high-profile speakers, and representatives of numerous national institutions, including Giovanni Rezza, Director General of Health Prevention Section at Ministry of Health, Giorgio Palu, President of Aifa, Giuseppe Indolfi, Pediatrician, Hepatology at Meyer Hospital of the University of Florence, member of the working group on hepatitis of the Italian Society of Pediatrics, Massimo Galli, former director of the infectious diseases department of the Sacco Hospital in Milan.

The goal is to learn from the past pandemic to develop exemplary practices to safeguard children’s health. The aim is to develop practices to protect the weakest and defenceless groups of the population, creating a series of initiatives and thematic meetings for dialogue and sharing involving the main exponents in the scientific and epidemiological fields. This target has been achieved by the creation of a manifesto, that everyone can sign on Change.org (https://chng.it/4m96G7HN). This document, therefore, aims to affirm the value of prevention and coordinated efforts against new shared health threats of an international nature.

The event has received much public interest and has been followed by numerous national and international newspapers, interested in shedding light on this crucial issue for the present.

Every life must be respected and safeguarded. For this reason, cooperation between specialists and institutions in the medical-health field could lead to the creation of intervention procedures that could help save many small lives and prevent the spread of a new epidemiological event that can change our shared history, again.