Poverty and overcrowding are leading to life-changing health outcomes. Diseases like rheumatic fever are rife in some communities.

Yet - the annual Ministry of Social Development Child Poverty Report found child poverty in New Zealand is just slightly above the median rate in European countries.

Single parent families suffer. Ethnic disparities remain. Maori children are more than twice as likely than average to experience material hardship. For Pasifika children, this affects nearly one in three.

These children are also more likely to become severely ill with preventable diseases.

Rent and housing costs take an increasing portion of household incomes. They disproportionately impact those on lower incomes.

Housing costs for all households with children increased from 15 per cent in 1988 to 22 per cent in 2021. Meanwhile, for those in the lowest fifth, they increased from 23 per cent to 40 per cent.

The worst-hit group was those that rented privately and received the Accommodation Supplement (AS), with almost half of their household income spent on accommodation on average.

The report author, Bryan Perry, says the survey only captured those children in private dwellings. It doesn't include those in accommodation like hotels, motels, boarding houses, hostels and camping grounds.

He said there remained about 60,000 children, or five per cent, in "very severe hardship".

The Guardian newspaper article reported:

Rheumatic heart disease is a disease divided down racial lines in New Zealand - 93% of cases present in Pasifika and Maori children.

Pasifika children are admitted to hospital for rheumatic fever 140 times more often than children of European or other ethnicities.

Maori children are admitted 50 times more often.

Each year about 140 people die from rheumatic heart disease.

Roughly 160 new cases are diagnosed a year. Many go unreported.

"Anything that can be done to remove the inequitable burden of this disease on the population is of the greatest priority.
I look forward to the day that rheumatic heart disease becomes a historic rarity on these shores," David McCormack says.

"As a cardiac surgeon - I had never treated rheumatic heart disease before coming to Aotearoa New Zealand. The grievous impact it has on young lives and whanau cannot be overstated," the UK-trained specialist says.

In other countries, rheumatic heart disease is extremely rare.

Eva Colette's Guardian article describes rheumatic fever as a "deadly autoimmune disease" for which there is no cure.

"It can be painful, cause neurological effects, and can develop into irreversible rheumatic heart disease, requiring long-term drug treatment and, on occasion, heart valve surgery," she wrote.

"On many measures, New Zealand is currently one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child."

Source

• NZ Doctor
• NZ Herald

There's been a dramatic spike in the number of Wellington children in hospital with the dangerous disease rheumatic fever.

Wellington's Regional Public Health service has issued an alert to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and Covid-19 testing centres, telling them to be on the lookout and to swab any children at risk.