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Speaker 1: A new report in to the health of the children

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Speaker 1: in this country is a particularly grim read out this morning,

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Speaker 1: Cure Kids' fourth State of Child Health report has found

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Speaker 1: that PACIFICA children are one hundred and fifteen times more

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Speaker 1: likely and MALDI children forty six times more likely to

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Speaker 1: be hospitalized with acute dramatic fever compared to their European counterparts.

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Speaker 1: Hospitalization rates for respiratory conditions and children under one year

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Speaker 1: have increased by forty four percent over the past two decades.

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Speaker 1: Stuart Darzil is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health

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Speaker 1: Research and a University of alkand professor. He's with us

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Speaker 1: this morning. Good morning, Good morning, Ron, Thanks for being

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Speaker 1: with me. Can I first ask about this report. Why

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Speaker 1: have you decided to group the children by race.

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Speaker 2: I think it's important when we look at our statistics

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Speaker 2: across the health system that we look at groups where

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Speaker 2: we have not delivered good quality healthcare in the past

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Speaker 2: two and so that is grouping children by race and

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Speaker 2: ethnicity is quite useful for that, but also grouping children

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Speaker 2: according to their socioeconomic status as well, and that same

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Speaker 2: disparity that you just talked about in terms of race,

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Speaker 2: you see that same disparity across the report for a

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Speaker 2: number of conditions socioeconomic status as well.

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Speaker 1: So what is driving these stats? Is it poverty or

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Speaker 1: is it race?

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Speaker 2: I think it is it's a combination of things. And

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Speaker 2: if we look at what are the foundations that good

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Speaker 2: health is built on. That's about adequate housing, that's about

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Speaker 2: adequate nutrition, that's about freedom from poverty. And we haven't

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Speaker 2: got those things sorted for all of our children. And

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Speaker 2: as a country, we need to be concentrated on those

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Speaker 2: big ticket items as well as the kind of individual

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Speaker 2: diseases we talked about in the report. In terms of

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Speaker 2: implementing specific health change as.

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Speaker 1: Well, the government has issued a director saying that we

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Speaker 1: need to focus on need rather than race. What particular

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Speaker 1: needs does this report say that we should focus on?

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Speaker 2: So I think the report is quite clear in terms

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Speaker 2: of where the need be, where the need lies. So

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Speaker 2: the report looked at five key health conditions respiratory disease,

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Speaker 2: skin infections, rheumatic heart disease, dental disease, and mental health.

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Speaker 2: And you alluded to the change that we've seen over

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Speaker 2: the last two decades. You know, in our infants, the

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Speaker 2: rates of respiratory disease have increased by forty four percent

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Speaker 2: over the last two decades. If we look at dental

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Speaker 2: health and mental health disorders, the rates of the have

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Speaker 2: increased by twice what they were two decades ago. We've

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Speaker 2: reduced some things like skin infection and rheumatic heart disease,

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Speaker 2: but for skin infections our rates are still twice on

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Speaker 2: what they should actually be, and for rammatic heart disease,

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Speaker 2: we're seeing one sixtieth what we should be seeing is

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Speaker 2: one sixtieth of what we are actually seeing. So the

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Speaker 2: priority is these areas of need and that's what we

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Speaker 2: should be focusing on. And there are individual communities within

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Speaker 2: that that we should be focusing on. But ideally, if

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Speaker 2: we just focus on these five conditions and we get

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Speaker 2: it right, we're going to get health right for all

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Speaker 2: of New Zealand's children.

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Speaker 1: Would you agree then with the government that it is

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Speaker 1: more helpful to focus on housing, to focus on family income,

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Speaker 1: focus on poverty rather than divvying everything up by race.

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Speaker 2: Look, I think honestly, you've got to look at both strategies.

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Speaker 2: I think you've got to look at a lens to

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Speaker 2: say which children are we failing and if we see

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Speaker 2: that we are failing on the basis of race. We

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Speaker 2: then need to have strategies and we need to question

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Speaker 2: ourselves why are we failing on race? Now? The answers

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Speaker 2: to that may not be specifically race targeted policies, but

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Speaker 2: what we need is we need policy. We need to

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Speaker 2: be very clear about where we are failing and then

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Speaker 2: we can look at ways to improve that.

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Speaker 1: All right, Stuart, thank you very much for your time

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Speaker 1: this morning. Stuart dziel Cure Kids Tier of Child Health

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Speaker 1: Research and University of Auckland professor. This new report out

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Speaker 1: this morning. It does make four particularly grim reading on

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Speaker 1: the state of our children's health. For more from News

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