Lecture 9: Adolescents Flashcards
UN’s definition of children
Persons under 14 years of age. To ensure greater protection, children are often defined as persons under 18
Adolescents, teenagers, youth and young adults
Adolescents: 10-19
Teenagers: 13-19
Youth: 15-24
Young adults: 20-24
UNICEF Health Strategy
Children health, mother health and adolescent health
Link between the health of all three
Tend to look at mother and child as a unit as a result of this
Causes of illness and death among Children Globally
Diarrhea
o Bacterial, viral parasitic organisms
o Most are spread by feces contaminated water
o Can leave children severely dehydrated
Pneumonia
o Bacteria, viral and fungi
o Caused by bacteria can be treated with antibiotics
o Acute respiratory infection of alveoli
Birth Asphyxia
o Happens when babies brain or other organs don’t get enough oxygen before, during or right after birth
o Often lead to developmental disorders
Sepsis
o Imbilicocord contamination
Pertussis
o Highly contagious bacterial disease of the respiratory tract
o First symptoms generally occur within the first 7 to 10 days
o Mild fever, runny nose and cough
o Mainly occurs within infants and children and easily transmitted
Tetanus
o A bacterial infection usually contracted through a puncture would with an unclean object
HIV and newborns
In 2013, there were 200 000 newborns infected by HIV, and 90% of them were in sub Saharan Africa
A newborn has about a 15-45% of being infected by an HIV positive women who is not receiving antiviral medication
UNICEF and WHO have framework for what conditions
Lots of attention given to pneumonia and diarrhea
• Due to the high death rate of these two
Protect, treat and prevent
Immunization protection
Routine immunization prevents between 2 and 3 million deaths and protects up to 100 million people against illness and disability, yearly
Vaccine preventable diseases remain a major cause of child mortality around the world
Immunization is the most successful and cost-effective health strategy
Decade of Vaccines
WHO anticipates that new vaccines against cholera, dengue, malaria, polio and typhoid will be introduced during the decade of vaccines which began in 2010
Requirements for national immunization programs
Trained and adequately compensated healthcare personnel
Key challenges in child health
Healthy well-nourished mother
Mother to child HIV transmission
Attendance at delivery by skilled birth attendant
Appropriate care of newborn
Kangaroo mother care: skin to skin
Early and exclusive breast feeding for 6 months
Hygienic introduction of diverse complementary foods
Immunization
Preventable care and management of NCD and CD
Child labor
Any economic activity undertaken by children under the minimum age for admission to employment as defined by the International Labour Organization
Children under the age of 18 working more than 1 hour per week in paid or unpaid work, on casual or regular basis, legal or illegal
Positive aspects of child work
Keeps them busy
Providing for the family
Future independence
International labor definition of child labor
Work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development
Work that is mentally, physically, social or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling
Concentration of working children
Africa and Asia
Unconditional worst forms of child labor
Violation of already existing human rights standards
Example: child slavery, forced or bonded labor, child trafficking, prostitution, pornography, child soldiers
Unresolved worst forms of child labor
Harmful to the health, safety, physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development of children
Often defined through the application of theories of child development
Example: work in dangerous environments, long work hours
Is a harder issue to address
Most of this work is being done in the agriculture district
Child labor and education
Child labour is frequently associated with educational marginalization
Strong correlation between child labour and situations of conflict and disaster
SES and child labor
Child labor is most prevalent in low-income countries but it is by no means only a low-income country problem
• Most child labour takes place within a family unit
Age and Child labor
Children aged 5 to 11 years form the largest share of those in child labor and also form a substantial share of those in hazardous work
Gender and child labor
Boys appear to face a greater risk of child labour than girls.
Girls are much more likely than boys to shoulder responsibilities for household chores
Sectoral composition of child labor
Highest thing in agriculture (family farms)
Many of these children suffer from illness or injury
More things in the agriculture hunting or fishing
Industry o Construction o Manufacturing of products o Mining o Public utilities
Services
o Working in the retail trade
o Restaurants
o Hotels
Health effects of child labor
Physical hazards:
Chemical hazards:
Cognitive hazards: memory, impacts school performance,
Psychosocial hazards: abuse, poor living conditions, violence, disrupted support
Behavioural/emotional hazards: mature quickly, sense of loss,
Community effects: contamination to home and water supply, smoking
Factors to consider when studying health effects in child labor
Hard to determine long term effects due to hidden and illegal work
May be a selection bias as your already picking out healthy kids who are able to do work
May be a long latency period until health effects are actually noticed
Chronic conditions may not be well determined as opposed to acute illnesses
Under recognition and misdiagnosis of problems
Africa’s youth population
By 2050, Africa’s youth population will rise to 35% of the worlds youth total
What country has highest youth population
Ethiopia, accounting for 21.8%
Global adolescent fertility rate
50 births per 1000 women
16 in developed countries
54 in less developed countries
Youth Bulge
Progress has been made in children not dying, but women are still having a high fertility rate
Results in large share of the population is comprised of children and young adults, and today’s children are tomorrow’s young adults
Generally tend to turn the youth bulge into a demographic dividend (economic growth for country)
• Success at this is measured in youth employment rate
Demographic Dividend
Occurs when the size of the working age population is high relative to the size of the dependent age population
• Resulting in potential for high level of economic productivity
What is required for economic productivity
There are jobs to productively employ the working age population
We capitalize on the relatively small number of dependent children by increasing educational attainment
Dependency ratio
Ratio of the non-working age population to the working age population
Benefits of improving secondary education
Improve skills for productive employment
Reducing risky health and social behaviours
Developing positive health behaviours and habits
Barriers to secondary school education
Excessive use of alcohol or drugs
Poor sanitation and hygiene
An estimated 1.2 million adolescents died in 2015
Leading cause of death in adolescents
Road injuries
HIV/AIDS
Self-harm
Leading cause of DALYs
Depression
road injuries
anemia
HIV
Age of sexual debut
Age of first sexual intercourse
Early sexual debut linked to…
Positively related to infertility, especially when there was more than one partner; a major cause of infertility is STIs
Higher likelihood of the use of coercion or force
Sexual debut males vs females
Males tend to start earlier than females
Adolescent Maternal conditions
16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth every year
3 million girls aged 15-19 undergo unsafe abortions every year
adolescent girls who give birth are at increased risk for birth complications, infant and maternal mortality
Adolescents and family planning
married women (15-19) use contraceptive to space births
in Africa and Asia the number of women pregnant or wish to become pregnant is higher than the number using contraception
significant unmet need for contraception among young women
