Hundreds of child deaths linked to deprivation 'avoidable', report shows
Neil Puffett
Monday, May 17, 2021
Children from deprived families are more likely to die before they reach adulthood than their more affluent peers, a study has found.
Research by the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD), based on data for children who died between April 2019 and March 2020 in England, found a clear association between the risk of child death and the level of deprivation for all categories of death except cancer.
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The report found that more than 20 per cent of all child deaths might be avoided if children living in the most deprived areas had the same mortality risk as those living in the least deprived – which translates to over 700 fewer children dying per year in England.
Resarchers found that the most common age at death was less than one year (63 per cent) and more boys than girls died (56.5 per cent compared with 43.5 per cent), while the majority of children who died lived in urban areas (87.8 per cent).
By linking each child’s address to the UK government’s ten deciles of deprivation, it was determined that child mortality increased as deprivation increased. On average, there was a 10 per cent increase in the risk of death during childhood between each decile of increasing deprivation.
The report’s authors have called on policy makers and those involved in planning and commissioning public health services as well as health and social care professionals to use the data in this report to develop, implement and monitor the impact of strategies and initiatives to reduce social deprivation and inequalities.
Professor Karen Luyt, NCMD programme lead, said: "This analysis shows what can be achieved when we pool our knowledge in order to learn lessons at a national level. We now ask that everyone involved in planning and delivering child health or social care services implement strategies to reduce social deprivation.”
Publication of the report comes amid a significant increase in the number of child deaths. Government statistics published in January showed that the number of children killed or seriously injured during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic increased by more than a quarter on the previous year.
Between April and September last year Ofsted received 285 serious incident notifications, a 27 per cent increase on the same period in 2019/20, figures show. Of these notifications, 119 related to child deaths, an increase from 89 in the same period of 2019/20.