Doctors report “unprecedented” rise in deformities, cancers in Iraq

Doctors report “unprecedented” rise in deformities, cancers in Iraq
By Larry Johnson

November 16 2009

As we in the news media like to say, violence has “abated” in Iraq.  For example, on Monday it was reported that 16 people – including a member of the country’s main Sunni political party and several of his relatives – were killed by gunmen. And a parked car bomb exploded in a market in Kirkuk, killing five people and wounding seven others.

It’s sad to say that the death of 21 people is not too bad, but this is a country that, since the U.S. invasion, often saw a daily civilian death toll topping 100.

But there is another, more insidious violence that is on the rise and will likely continue to rise for generations to come.

The Guardian.co.uk (has and excellent Video) reports that doctors in Fallujah are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The report said, “Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems – are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.”

Actually, this rise in birth defects has been reported on – by, at least a handful of journalists – for years. Iraqi researchers and doctors – for years – have documented the rise of birth defects and cancer primarily in southern Iraq where most of the fighting took place in the first Gulf War. With the second war in Iraq, it seems obvious that the problem is spreading. Depleted uranium has been singled out as the most likely cause.

Depleted uranium, which is used for armor-piercing shells of various sizes, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years. Many governments have outlawed the use of DU as weapons. The United States has not.

In 2002 and 2003, I researched the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq for stories in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.

In the 2002 story:

“Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans…”

At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a British-trained oncologist, showed me photo albums he kept of dead and deformed infants that he believed were linked to DU. There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities went on and on.

In the 2003 story:

“Doctors in Iraq say the number of cancers and birth defects may be devastating.

“‘This is the right time for active support to help prevent the catastrophic effects of the bombing,’ said Dr. Alim Yacoub, dean of the Al Mustansiriya Medical School in Baghdad.

‘“If there isn’t a centralized health plan soon, the consequences could be devastating,’ said Yacoub, the foremost Iraqi authority on the effects of DU. Yacoub has tracked the rise of cancer in Iraq for years, and places the blame squarely on DU.”

An Iraqi scientist, Souad N. Al-Azzawi documented the entire history of DU in Iraq and its devastating effects on the people there, in a presentation to the Kuala Lumpur International Conference to Criminalise War in October. Al-Azzawi, who was forced into exile from Iraq, has devoted many years to her work, at considerable personal risk.

So, the problem isn’t that the rise in cancer and birth defects in Iraq is “unprecedented” or “unexplainable.”  The problem is the United States government, and other governments, won’t do anything about it.

Source

They need help the hospitals nor the Doctors can handle all the patients.

The Americans caused the problems and yet will not help them. The children are in desperate need of much more medical help.

Deformed Babies in Fallujah: Iraq Letter to the United Nations

by Dr. Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai et al

November 15 2009

Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs.

Fatima Ahmed was born in Fallujah with deformities that include two heads

In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukaemias. These deformities are now well documented, for example in television documentaries on SKY UK on September 1 2009, and on SKY UK June 2008. Our direct contact with doctors in Fallujah report that:In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
President of the Sixty-fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations
New York, NY 10017October 12th 2009Your Excellency,RE DEFORMED BABIES IN FALLUJAH Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, “a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage”.  As one of a number of doctors, scientists and those with deep concern for Iraq, Dr Chris Burns-Cox, a British hospital physician, wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon. Clare Short, M.P. asking about this situation. She wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon.Douglas Alexander, M.P. the Secretary of State of the Department for International Development (a post she had held before she resigned on a matter of principle in May 2003 ) asking for clarification of the position of deformed children in Fallujah.She received a reply dated 3rd September 2009 (two days after the Sky TV broadcast of 1st September 2009 ) from a junior minister, deputy to The Secretary of State, Mr. Gareth Thomas MP, Duty Minister, Department for International Development. In his reply he denies that there are more than two or three deformed babies in Fallujah in a year and asserts that there is, therefore, no problem. This is at wild variance with reports coming out of Fallujah. One grave digger of a single cemetery is burying four to five babies a day, most of which he says are deformed.Clare Short passed us a copy of this letter. It bears a remarkable similarity to three other written answers we have received over a four year period, in regard to child health and the use of depleted uranium. All these letters are based on lies and an aim to confuse the recipients. In her autobiography “Honorable Deception?” Clare Short says “The first instinct of Number 10 (Downing Street) is to lie.”We regard the mendacity of Mr. Thomas’s letter, and of the other letters we have received, as extremely serious. These letters do not deal with minor matters of corruption, or taxes, but do deal with the use of armed forces and deadly weapons.

The use of certain weapons has tremendous repercussions. Iraq will become a country, if it has not already done so, where it is advisable not to have children. Other countries will watch what has happened in Iraq, and imitate the Coalition Allies’ total disregard of the United Nations Charter, The Geneva, and Hague Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Some countries, such as Afghanistan, will also come to experience the very long term damage to the environment, measured in billions of years, and the devastating effect of depleted uranium and white phosphorous munitions.

If, as we say in our letter to the Duty Minister of the Department for International Development, the UK Government clearly does not know the effects of the weapons it uses, nor, as a matter of policy, does “it do body counts”, how can the UK Government judge whether it is conducting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan according to International Law, especially in terms of “proportionality” and long term damage to the natural environment? How can the UK know about the illegality of the weapons systems it sells on the international market, such as the “Storm Shadow” missile, if the very Department of the Government that is supposed to assess the deaths and medical needs of children and adults in Iraq is not telling the truth.

We request from the United Nations General Assembly the following:

1. To acknowledge that there is a serious problem regarding the unprecedented number of birth defects and cancer cases in Iraq specifically in Fallujah, Basra, Baghdad and Al – Najaf.

2. To set up an independent committee to conduct a full investigation into the problem of the increased number of birth defects and cancers in Iraq.

3. To implement the cleaning up of toxic materials used by the occupying forces including Depleted Uranium, and White Phosphorus.

4. To prevent children and adults entering contaminated areas to minimize exposure to these hazards.

5. To investigate whether war crimes, or crimes against humanity, have been committed, and thereby uphold the United Nations Charter, The Geneva and Hague Conventions, and The Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court.

Please find enclosed a copy of our letter to Mr Gareth Thomas, dated 12th October 2009, and his letter to The Rt Hon Clare Short, M.P. dated 3rd September 2009, and enclosures relating to this matter.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai ( Iraq Minister of Women’s Affairs 2006 -2009)

Dr. David Halpin FRCS (Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon)

Malak Hamdan M. Eng in Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering.

Dr Chris Burns-Cox MD FRCP

Dr. Haithem Alshaibani (Environmental Sciences)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (Author and Journalist)
Nicholas Wood MA, RIBA, FRGS

Enclosures to follow by surface mail:

1:  Copy of Sky Television Documentary 1 September 2009 “The Deformed Babies of Fallujah”:

2:  Copy of Sky Television Documentary June 2008 “The Deformed Babies of Fallujah”.

3:  Frieder Wagners’s film “Deadly Desert Dust” 2006.

4:  Report by doctors in Fallujah 4 March 2008 ” Prohibited Weapons Crisis”

5:  Film the “Dying children of Iraq”,compiled by Nicholas Wood.

6:  US Army briefing on the use of White Phosphorous in Fallujah on “Shake and Bake Missions”

7:  Report “Who Can Forgive the Crime of using Depleted Uranium Against Iraq and Humanity” by Dr Haithem Alshaibani, September 2009 .

8:  Written Answer by Mr Hilary Benn, Secretary of State, Department for International Development to Parliamentary Question. 10 March 2005.

9:  Letter by Mr Hilary Benn, Secretary of State, Department for International Development to The Independent, 20 January 2007, in reply to the 98 Doctors’ letter to the Prime Minister.

10:  Letter by Rt.Hon. Des Browne, M.P. UK Former Minister of Defence to Rt. Hon. Tony Benn, November 2008

11:  Black Country Coroner’s District ( Sandwell, Dudley.and Walsall: ) Coroner’s Report into death of Stuart Raymond Dyson. 18 September 2009.

12:  Calculations of expected child abnormalities in a city the size of Cardiff or Fallujah using UK statistics , David Halpin FRCS

Letter from Mr Gareth Thomas M.P. Duty Minister, Department for International Development, 3 September 2009 to Rt. Hon. Clare Short M.P.

Source

Sept 1, 2009

By Lisa Holland

Sadness Of Fallujah’s Sick Children

A doctor in Iraq has told Sky News that more and more children are being born with deformities in Fallujah, a city heavily bombed by the US in 2004. Lisa Holland’s report contains pictures of children with severe medical conditions and deformities. Video Here

This is beyond sad. These poor children and parents should never have had to go through this.

The under taker at a Fallujah cemetery  says he buries 4 or 5 newborns every day and most are deformed.

This is compliments of the US invasion.

This is a crime against Humanity and a War Crime to say the very lest.

Words cannot describe, the despair these parents must feel.

This of course happens everywhere the US goes, this is the trail of horror they leave behind. This is caused by the Weapons they used and they sell these weapons to other countries as well.

The soldiers who have been there, can also have children with these types of deformities.

This Video Released in 2007

An award winning documentary film produced for German television by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn. The film exposes the use and impact of radioactive weapons during the current war against Iraq. The story is told by citizens of many nations. It opens with comments by two British veterans, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called depleted uranium (DU), weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children. Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a former colleague of Albert Schweitzer, and Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) traveled to Iraq, from Germany and Canada respectively, to assess uranium contamination in Iraq

The Hidden Massacre of Fallujah

This is the terrible testimony given by Jeff Englehart, veteran of the war in Iraq. “I have seen women and children burnt bodies – the former U.S. soldier added – phosphorus explodes and it creates a cloud. Whoever is within 150 mt is dead.” Some witnesses have seen a rainfall of burning substances of different colors that were burning people when hit and even those who were not hit had problems breathing”, told us Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, director of the center for human rights studies in Fallujah.

More pictures of Babies Born in Iraq with Deformities

This is the result of weapons used by the US

What the US didn’t want anyone to know.

Whether it be Napalm,  White Phosphorous or another new Weapon of Mass Destruction the end result it horrifying.

These are the Victims of the US.

This is beyond cruel.

This is beyond a war crime

This is the US inhumanity

Who has and used Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not Iraqis.

How can anyone do this?

This is the true face of war.

Those responsible for this must be held responsible.

Americans must know what their Government did.

Imagine how you would react to this type of horror

How can anyone in the World think this is OK?

How many must die before we Say NO TO WAR?

Is it any wonder they hate Americans?

We also have Children Like this little girl and there are many more like

Mouna.

Mouna’s Story : An Iraqi Girl Struggles to Walk Again

The five-part series  chronicles the story of Mouna, a young girl who suffered severe injuries in Iraq, she learned how  to walk again, on artificial limbs with the help of MSF/Doctors Without Boarders, surgeons and physiotherapists in Amman, Jordan.

It was a very long, painful road for a little girl to travel.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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Pipelines in the Middle East Afghanistan included/ Maps as well

Why: War in Iraq and Afghanistan

There’s a ticking time bomb in Serbia, where doctors have reported a sharp increase in cancer deaths among locals and claim this could be linked to NATO’s use of depleted uranium shells during the 1999 bombings. NATO bombings: Aftermath takes toll on Serbia, now left with DU Poisoning

Just recently in China which isn’t so far off a baby with two heads was found abandoned. When it comes to war pollution the wind blows and it goes.

War “Pollution” Equals Millions of Deaths

More Videos on Depleted Uranium

White Phosphorus Victims in Gaza

Gaza phosphorus casualties relive Israel’s three-week war
Special Report: By Tim Butcher in Gaza City argues why the true story about Israel’s use of phosphorus shells may never emerge.

Sabbah Abu Halima, 45, suffered burns in the shelling of the village of Atatra on the northern edge of Gaza. She saw her husband and baby daughter killed. Photo: REUTERS

January 23 2009

John Stuart Mill described war as an ugly thing and it does not come much uglier than the digital photograph Mahmoud Abu Halima has on his mobile phone. It was taken this week and shows the body of his 15-month-old sister, Shahed, burned by white phosphorus, bloated through decomposition and without any feet or legs.

Mr Halima explained what happened to the lower limbs.

“There were about 12 bodies from the village that had to be left out in the open when the Israeli soldiers came. By the time we got back she had been partially eaten by wild dogs,” he said.

After Israel ended its ban on foreign journalists in Gaza it was a week of piecing together such stories, trying to clarify exactly what happened during the three-week military assault by Israel’s armed forces.

The Israeli government has accused people like the Halima family of being coached by Hamas to spout fiction.

Investigation of the Halima family began in the burns unit at Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza. During its military operations Israel had denied using white phosphorus shells improperly, meaning it was not used against civilians or in civilian areas. But the case of Sabbah Abu Halima, 45, suggested otherwise.

She had been brought into the hospital with what appeared to be mild burns to her right forearm, left lower leg and feet. Without experience of white phosphorus, the staff, led by the unit’s director, Nafiz Abu Shabaan, wiped the wounds, bound them and sent her on her way. “But two days later she came back, complaining of pain and when we opened the bandages we found her wounds still smoking and much, much bigger. Her arm was down to the bone and tendons, that is all that is left,” he said.

Sitting on her hospital bed and wincing with pain when her bandages pinched, Mrs Halima gave an initial account of what happened. She described how her family had gathered to eat in a first-storey room at the family home in the village of Atatra. It lies on the northern edge of Gaza and while it was never likely to be a target during the air assault phase of Israel’s operation Cast Lead, its proximity to the fence with Israel meant it was in the front line for the ground offensive.

“The first shells landed outside and we all stood up and went into the hall and a bedroom because we thought it was safe. That was when a shell came through the roof and exploded. My husband, Saadallah, was holding some of the children but his head was cut off. There was fire and smoke everywhere and the baby Shahed fell to the ground. I heard her cry ‘mama, mama, mama’, and then she stopped,” Mrs Halima said. The house should be a 20-minute drive from Shifa but the conflict has turned roads into slow obstacle courses with cars having to slalom round craters, heaps of rubble and bloated carcasses of livestock. The Halima house lies just off a main road in Atatra up a muddy alley leading to fields of hothouses.

Outside the house lay evidence of the shelling Mrs Halima described. Two white phosphorus shell cases, originally painted light green but burnt by detonations with the metal bent back like tulip petals, were on the ground.

One still had the four tell-tale angle-irons inside to indicate a 155mm white phosphorus shell and was packed with unburned chemical. A poke with a stick to expose the chemical to oxygen was enough to set it burning again, sending out white smoke.

Mr Halima, 20, was next door in the house of his uncle, Hikmat, 42, when the barrage struck and he remembered the smell of the smoke as he rushed up the open stairwell at his home.

“It was a bad smell, a smell that made you choke,” he said. “I came upstairs but there was smoke everywhere. I ran to get water from the bathroom but when I put the water on them the water did not stop the fire.”

White phosphorus fires are resistant to water.

As well as his infant sister and father, Mr Halima lost two brothers – Zaid, 10, and Hamza, eight – in the blast and subsequent fire.

Mr Halima explained how the killing did not end there. As the wounded, including his mother, were dragged down the stairwell, his cousin, Mohammed, 16, the son of Hikmat, ran to the fields to fetch a tractor and trailer to take the injured to safety. According to witnesses, Mohammed was shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

The Atatra case is one of many in Gaza for which human rights activists have demanded an investigation. Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, has suggested that there is at least one case with “the appearance of war crimes”. But Israel does not have a good record of co-operating with those investigating atrocities in Gaza. In 2006 after Israeli artillery killed 18 members of the Athamneh family in Gaza, Israel cleared itself of wrongdoing in an internal inquiry and blocked Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel peace prize laureate, from reaching Gaza to investigate the incident for the UN.

This time round, after denying any improper use of white phosphorus, Israel has launched an internal inquiry. In some ways full-scale investigations of alleged atrocities by the Israeli army are academic.

With the two sides in the conflict so far apart, Israeli hard-liners will not shift from their faith in the probity of its armed forces, nor will Palestinians budge from the view that their people were innocent victims. But unless they are dealt with, the cycle of enmity that has fueled this conflict for decades will continue and the loss of life – 13 Israelis and over 1,300 Palestinians – will have been for nothing.

When Israel launched its attack its stated aim was to reduce Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. At one level the mission has been successful: the militants’ rockets have all but stopped. But before the Israeli government unfurls a Mission Accomplished banner there remains one important point of business: the smuggling tunnels are open again.

Much of the tunneling under the Egyptian border is surprisingly visible, taking place out in the open in the south Gazan town of Rafah clearly within sight of nearby Egyptian watchtowers. The area was pitted with craters from Israeli air strikes but during a visit I saw several of the tunnels open or being repaired.

Further north in the town of Beit Hanoun was the house of Angham al Masri, a 10-year-old girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike after it began its ceasefire in the early hours last Sunday. Her father, Rafat, 44, explained how his daughter thought the ceasefire made it safe to venture out of the house for the first time in days to check on the family farm that had been evacuated during the fighting. “She had only gone a few hundred metres when the missile struck,” he said. “I ran to her and picked her up but she died in an hour.” Israel said it attacked a rocket firing position.

Amid claim and counter-claim about Israel’s war aims and achievements, Mr Masri then indicated how operation Cast Lead has done nothing but harden Palestinian resolve against Israel.

“Israel said this was a war on Hamas but when they kill people like my daughter it becomes clear it is a war on the Palestinian people,” he said. “Until they change this war will never end.”

Source

Israeli’s have committed many crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, they have also broken International Laws.

Those responsible, should be prosecuted. They should be charged with all crimes they have committed past and present.

Israel warns soldiers of prosecution abroad for Gaza ‘war crimes’

Father: ‘I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls’

Indexed List of all Stories in Archives

UNICEF Reports 2008

Drowning, other accidents kill 800,000 kids a year

By BEN STOCKING

December 11 2008

HANOI, Vietnam

Simple things like seat belts, childproof medicine caps and fences around pools could help prevent half of the 2,000 child deaths worldwide that occur every day because of accidents, UN officials said Wednesday.

More than 800,000 children die each year from burns, drowning, car crashes, falls, poisoning and other accidents, with the vast majority of those deaths occurring in developing countries, according to experts and a report released Wednesday by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

Tens of millions more suffer injuries that often leave them disabled for life, said the report which was launched at a meeting of global health experts in Hanoi. The World Report on Child Injury Prevention 2008 does not include injuries caused by domestic violence.

The problem is most acute in Africa and Southeast Asia, but no country is immune, conference participants said, issuing an urgent call for action.

“The price of failure is high,” said Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, speaking in a videotape shown at the conference. “On current estimates, unintentional injuries claim the lives of around 830,000 children worldwide every year.”

Many parents in developing countries share the double burden of childcare and work, making it difficult for them to watch their children all the time.

In Vietnam, about 10 kids drown a day, and drowning is the leading cause of injury-related deaths for children over one year of age.

Basket weaver Nguyen Thi Chung’s 2-year-old daughter fell into a river near the family’s house in the Mekong delta two years ago and nearly drowned — prompting the family to put up bamboo fences around the house.

“We should have done that before. We were too busy with making baskets. We need to work hard if we are to earn enough to feed our children,” Chung was quoted as saying in a UNICEF statement. “Our thoughtlessness almost cost the life of my daughter.”

The world’s poorer countries and communities often lack basic safety education programs and quality healthcare, said Chan of the WHO. When its available, life-saving health services can be economically devastating.

“The costs of such treatment can throw an entire family into poverty,” Chan said.

The report calls on countries around the world to issue prevention measures such as seatbelt and helmet laws, child-safe medicine bottles, water heater controls and safer designs for nursery furniture and toys. It also recommends various traffic safety improvements and putting fences around pools and ponds to prevent drowning. A child-friendly version with safety tips was issued at the conference and online.

Such steps have been taken in many high-income countries and have reduced child injury deaths by up to 50 percent over the last 30 years, the report says.

Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF’s executive director, said unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children between 9 and 18 years old and 95 percent of these injuries occur in developing countries.

“More must be done to prevent such harm to children,” she said, also speaking via video.

On the Net: UNICEF Publications

Source

Childcare is bad for your baby, working parents are warned
A Unicef study suggests that government policy is at odds with the developmental needs of children under 12 months

By Alexandra Frean

Parents and governments are taking a “high-stakes gamble” with the long-term wellbeing of children by subjecting them to long hours of formal childcare from a very young age, according to a Unicef report.

The study, which has prompted Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, to complain to the UN agency, recommends that all children should where possible be cared for by parents at home during the first 12 months of life. Children from the poorest homes face the double disadvantage of being born into material deprivation and receiving sub-standard childcare, Unicef says.

The research, which draws on a wealth of scientific and psychological studies, as well as government data, is bound to reignite the fraught debate on whether overexposure to formal childcare is bad for very young children.

It is also likely to provoke concerns over whether growing political, social and economic pressure on parents, particularly those on low incomes, to return to work soon after their child is born is at odds with emerging research into children’s brains showing the importance of stable one-to-one care in the first year of life.

The study suggests that government policies on maternity leave and childcare provision could be at odds with “today’s knowledge of the critical developmental needs of the very young child”.

The report ranks Britain joint 11th out of 25 developed nations for the quality of its childcare policies and calls for government expenditure on the sector to be raised to 1 per cent of GDP. To achieve this, Britain would have to double its present levels of spending.

David Bull, the executive director of Unicef UK, said that despite spending on preschool education in England having quadrupled in the past ten years, “high-quality childcare is not yet available to all, and parental leave provisions remain inadequate”. He added: “The report is also clear that rich nations have often been guilty of making policies based on economic considerations, not the best interests of the child.”

Last night Ms Hughes that she had written to Unicef to complain that the report was full of factual inaccuracies that misrepresented Britain’s position on childcare and early learning in a number of ways and that it may well do the same for other countries.

The report has been published at a key point in the childcare debate. Children born today into the rich world are part of the first generation in which a majority will spend a large part of their early childhood in childcare. In Britain about 80 per cent of those aged 3 to 6 are now in some form of formal childcare or education. For those under 3, the proportion is now 25 per cent.

In part, this reflects new opportunities for women to be employed outside the home. But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.

The report notes that high-quality formal childcare can bring huge benefits to children, particularly those from disadvantaged homes, expanding their social and cognitive development and providing them with stimulation that they might not get at home.

But it cites research from Britain and the US suggesting that children who spend too long in formal childcare at too young an age may suffer from long-term effects, including behavioural problems, aggression, antisocial behaviour, depression and an inability to concentrate – although the effects are thought to be relatively small.

The report, drawn up in consultation with governments and academic experts from several countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and with the World Bank, suggests that the age at which group childcare becomes appropriate is somewhere between 1 and 2.

The report also notes that, despite considerable investment in early-years care, particularly through the Sure Start programme for under5s, Britain is among a small number of countries where the provision of good childcare is being hampered by a lack of well-trained staff.

“Employment in nurseries and daycare centres is often seen as suitable for those who are very young, unqualified, transient, or all three,” it states, adding that “such views are dangerously out of date”.

Because poor families are under the greatest pressure to find cheap childcare at the earliest opportunity, their children are most at risk, the study says. To counter this, it recommends that childcare services provided for the poorest be heavily subsidised.

Sue Owen, of the children’s charity NCB, said that British parents should not panic at the findings: huge strides had been made in the past decade to improve childcare provision. The importance of one-to-one care for infants aged under a year was already recognised by most formal childcare providers. “The concept of having a key worker who builds up a one-to-one relationship with your child has been very strong in Britain for years,” she said.

Maria Millar, the Shadow Minister for Families, said that urgent action was needed to ensure that the poorest families had access to high-quality preschool services so that the cycle of poverty could be broken.

The report follows a controversial study by Unicef last year claiming that Britain’s children were the unhappiest in the West . That report led to the Government’s ten-year Children’s Plan, which aims to make Britain the best place for children to grow up.

For: Daycare creates confident adolescents

— A study of the effectiveness of the Early Head Start programme in the US, based on 3,000 families in 17 programmes, has shown that participating children have better cognitive and language development, are more capable of sustained attention and behave less aggressively towards others

— The Canadian researchers G Cleveland and M Krashinsky found that “good childcare can compensate, at least partially, for a disadvantaged home life”. They added: “Although early childhood education and care benefits all children, much of the evidence suggests that the largest benefits flow to children from the most disadvantaged families”

— The 2005 report The Economics of Investing in Universal Preschool Education in California found that children who attended preschool were more likely to graduate from high school, earned higher salaries as adults and were less likely to become involved in crime. The authors claim that even if only 25 per cent of California’s children benefited from universal preschool education, the state could still expect a return of $2 for every $1 invested

— The Effective Provision of Preschool Education study in Britain concludes that preschool enhances children’s cognitive and social development and the effects are greatest for disadvantaged children

— A long-term study of the effects of early childhood services in Sweden by Bengt Erik-Andersson found that “early entrance into daycare tends to predict a creative, socially confident, popular, open and independent adolescent”

Against: It fosters disobedience and aggression

— According to the Effective Provision of Preschool Education study conducted in Britain, “high levels of group care before the age of 3 (and particularly before the age of 2) were associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour at age 3”

— Research from the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development concluded: “The more time children spent in childcare from birth to age 4=, the more adults tended to rate them . . . as less likely to get along with others, as more assertive, as disobedient and as aggressive”

— The Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph argues that childcare is inappropriate for under3s. “The best nurseries struggled to meet the needs of very young children in a group setting,” he says. “The worst were negligent, frightening and bleak; a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was heartbreaking to watch. Children at this age – under 3 – will want one thing only: the individual care of their own special person”

— In The Science of Early Childhood Development by the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University, researchers describe the intimate and constant back-and-forth interaction of parent and baby as the “serve-and-return” relationship. “It works best when it is embedded in an ongoing relationship between a child and an adult who is responsive to the child’s own unique individuality,” the study says. According to Professor Jack Shonkoff, director of the Harvard University Centre on the Developing Child, excessive levels of stress hormones in babies “literally disrupt brain architecture”

Source

Unicef: Poorer children face ‘double disadvantage’ in early years
4Children questions Unicef findings and says glass half-full on childcare

December 11 2008
By Ruth Lewy

Children born into poverty in England face a “double disadvantage” as the early years services they receive are likely to be of low quality, a Unicef report warns today.

However, some of its findings have been questioned by children’s charity 4Children.

The report looked at early years care and education across 25 developed countries. England failed half of the ten standards, and was ranked in joint 11th place.

David Bull, executive director of Unicef UK, said: “The government has taken great strides but much more needs to be done. High-quality childcare is not yet available to all, and parental leave provisions remain inadequate.”

New opportunities for mothers

The report highlighted a sharp increase in the number of children under the age of one who received childcare outside the home, reflecting the new opportunities for working mothers and the increasingly formal nature of childcare provision.

However the report warned that it was the poorest families that were most pressured to make out-of-home childcare arrangements, but did not have the funds to secure high-quality care.

Expenditure on pre-school education in England has quadrupled in the last ten years, and the government has committed to a children’s centre in every community, with 3,000 in place by this year.

Failed to meet GDP target

But England still failed to meet the Unicef benchmark of investing 1% of GDP in early years services, the report said.

However, Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, questioned these figures. The children’s charity last year found government early years spending to be at 1% of GDP, and called for it to be doubled.

Longfield also suggested that the impact of children’s centres had been overlooked by Unicef. She said: “Children’s centres are spearheading innovative and progressive support and providing universal access to fantastic services.”

Source

Child Care harms children: Unicef

Yes, you can harm your child’s development. But not if you are the kind of working mother who makes beetroot compote

By Alice Thomson

So this is it. Unicef has finally pronounced on childcare and its verdict is damning. Mothers who tear their babies from their breasts, squeeze themselves back into a suit and return to work before their darlings are old enough to say “Mummy stay home” are in danger of damaging their child for life.While nurseries lined with cots and feeding charts may not be quite as cruel as Romanian orphanages, they are harming babies under 2 who need one-to-one contact with an adult to thrive.

Unicef’s league table ranks countries by the type of care that they provide for young children in “their most formative years” and Britain languishes near the bottom half. The report suggests that babies need constant love as a foundation for intellectual as well as emotional development, that stress (presumably from being separated from their mothers) can disrupt their developing brain and that children’s early interaction with their family establishes “the patterns of neural connections and chemical balances” that profoundly influence what they will become.

The guilt. Mothers clutching their lattes as they rush from school to work still absent-mindedly holding their child’s book bag will feel sick as they watch the stay-at-home mothers cruising back on their son’s scooter, baby strapped to their front. Have they disadvantaged their children by going back too soon? Will their daughter go to university after being left with a series of Bulgarian au pairs? Will their child ever be invited on playdates if they never go to those coffee mornings with the other mothers? Do they really need the money so much that they have sacrificed their son’s wellbeing for a bigger house and mortgage?

The last time Unicef produced a report into children’s happiness it didn’t take long for British parents to begin flagellating themselves with their daughters’ skipping ropes. This country came at the bottom of the happiness league. The Archbishop of Canterbury said it was shocking, a new post of children’s commissioner was created, and children’s writers weighed in. It didn’t matter that the statistics were skewed, that North Korean children, when asked by their cane-wielding teacher, are bound to say that they are content and that the Americans refused to add in any statistics on teenage pregnancies. British mothers are tortured about how to bring up their children. This country tops the world league in childcare manuals.

The latest Unicef report says that more than half of all British mothers now go back to work when their child is under 1 but the Government’s statistics show that it is just under half and that the number of women in full-time work is actually dropping. Many employees are now taking advantage of a year-long maternity leave and flexitime to diversify or modify their careers so they can spend more time making cupcakes with their families. There has been a 40 per cent drop in women in senior management roles at UK FTSE 350 companies in the past five years and the majority of working women are part-time.

Middle-class children don’t suffer from a moderate amount of high-quality childcare, whether they are reading The Gruffalo with an au pair, a nanny, a grandmother or in a nursery. It is their mothers who become anxious, racked by remorse at leaving their babies with someone who soon knows more about their shoe size and their preference for sweetcorn-and-honey sandwiches. Mothers leave strict instructions about only feeding their little ones organic beetroot compotes and not watching DVDs. But even if their children do inexplicably seem to prefer pies to polenta and know all the lyrics for Bob the Builder, the statistics show that as long as they were looked after by loving adults, they will not be psychologically harmed.

There has never been a golden age of childcare. Even in the 1950s when the majority of women saw being a wife and mother as their primary role, most were distracted by a constant round of shopping, washing and cooking.

The real problem, as the report admits after a great many pages, concerns children from poorer backgrounds who may already be disadvantaged. These children, particularly those who have English as a second language or who come from deprived homes, are likely to thrive if they integrate with other children from the age of 3, which is why so many resources have been poured into the Sure Start programme for pre-school children.

However, for children below that age the picture is very different. For those who attend large, underprovided nurseries the result is likely to be slower development and underachievement at school. A study of children using government-funded childcare in the UK showed that those in “group care” before the age of 3 tended to show higher levels of antisocial behaviour at school.

The Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph suggested last year that the best nurseries could cater for the needs of the very young but that the worst were “negligent, frightening and bleak, a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was heartbreaking to watch”. A recent Ofsted report backed his findings, stating that more than half of the childminders and nurseries in some London boroughs were “inadequate”, with many staff being unqualified and uncommitted.

So this report is more valuable to the Government than to anxious middle-class parents who obsessively vet their nurseries and nannies. Yesterday ministers announced reforms to the welfare state that will encourage mothers with children over the age of 1 to “prepare” for the job market.

Yet it is clear that there is little point in forcing the least well-off mothers back into work if their baby is going to be looked after by another poorly paid worker in charge of several babies. Either the Government must help these mothers to recognise that looking after their young children is a serious job or they must provide these children from deprived backgrounds with highly skilled, well-paid nursery teachers who can help to improve their chances in life not damage them.

Meanwhile, all those earnest, well-meaning, nervous middle-class mothers should relax. The most significant Unicef research shows that the happiest mothers create the most contented children; so whatever decision you make, stop worrying and your child will be fine.

Source

Report: Canada failed

December 11 2008

TORONTO

Canada fails to meet nine of out 10 proposed standards aimed at ensuring children get the best start in life through education and support programs, tying for last place among affluent countries, an analysis released Wednesday by UNICEF concludes.

The UNICEF benchmarks are crucial for children in their formative years, says the United Nations organization.

“We over-invest in remedial action down the line when kids reach their teen years and under-invest in the early years when their behaviour, their comportment, their learning can really be set for the rest of their lives,” said Nigel Fisher, head of UNICEF Canada.

The benchmarks, which UNICEF calls practical and reachable, include providing a year of parental leave at 50 per cent or more of salary and spending one per cent of gross domestic product on childhood services.

Sweden was the only country to meet all 10 standards and Iceland met nine among the 24 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Slovenia, which scored six out of 10, was the only non-OECD country assessed.

At the bottom, Canada and Ireland were found to reach only one benchmark: half of staff in accredited early-education services have proper post-secondary qualifications. The United States met three.

Martha Friendly, director of the Toronto-based Childcare Resource and Research Unit, said Canada’s poor showing came as no surprise.

“The child-care transition . . . is being facilitated by public policies in most countries,” Friendly said.

“In Canada, this has been left to be a private family responsibility. We have very weak public policy and that would be at the national level and at the level of most of the provinces.”

Friendly said the federal government needs to send an “emergency signal” showing it considers the issue important by making commitments in its budget next month.

The UNICEF report argues that many OECD countries need to almost double current levels of expenditure on early childhood services to meet minimum acceptable standards.

Canada, for example, spends roughly 0.2 per cent of its GDP on child supports, Fisher said.

The report notes that most children in the developed world are spending their earliest years in some form of care outside the home.

About 80 per cent of children aged three to six are in some form of early childhood education and care outside the home.

About one in four under the age of three are also cared for outside the home – with the proportion rising to one in two in some countries.

“What we are now witnessing across the industrialized world can fairly be described as a revolution in how the majority of young children are being brought up,” the report states.

“To the extent that this change is unplanned and unmonitored, it could also be described as a high-stakes gamble with today’s children and tomorrow’s world.”

The report emphasizes advances in recent years in scientific research show the long-term importance of giving kids a good educational and emotional start in life – something especially key for marginalized or otherwise disadvantaged children.

The report can be found at www.unicef.ca.

UNICEF proposed benchmarks and rankings for early child care

TORONTO – UNICEF has issued a report ranking 25 countries against 10 proposed benchmarks when it comes to early childhood services.

Among proposed minimum standards:

Entitlement to paid parental leave of at least one year at 50 per cent of salary

A national plan with priority for disadvantaged children

Subsidized and regulated child care for 25 per cent of children under three

Subsidized and regulated child care for 80 per cent of children aged four

Accredited training for 80 per cent of child-care staff

Staff-to-children ratio of 1:15 in groups of under 25

Public funding for children under six of one per cent of GDP

Top five and bottom five affluent countries in terms of meeting early child-support standards:

Sweden: 10

Iceland: 9

Denmark: 8

Finland: 8

France: 8

Switzerland: 3

United States: 3

Australia: 2

Canada: 1

Ireland: 1

Source

Profiting from Abuse.

The commercial sexual exploitation of children assumes many forms and has many faces. Children are enslaved by a chain of actors, all of whom profit in some way. [Download a PDF copy]

The State of the World’s Children 2008: Child Survival

The State of the World’s Children 2008 provides a wide-ranging assessment of the current state of child survival and primary health care for mothers, newborns and children. It examines lessons learned in child health during the past few decades and outlines the most important emerging precepts and strategies for reducing deaths among children under age five and for providing a continuum of care for mothers, newborns and children.

The State of the World’s Children 2008: Executive Summary

The State of the World’s Children 2008 examines the current state of child survival and primary health care for mothers, newborns and children – and outlines strategies for reducing under-five deaths and providing a continuum of care. The pocket-sized executive summary provides an overview of the full report and includes regional summary indicators.

The State of Africa’s Children 2008

The State of Africa’s Children 2008 is a regional edition of UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2008 report. Complementary to the global report, it examines the state of child survival in Africa and highlights the need to position child health at the heart of the region’s development and human rights agenda. It also outlines possible solutions – programmes, policies and partnerships – to accelerate progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

The State of Asia-Pacific’s Children 2008

The State of Asia-Pacific’s Children 2008 is a regional edition of UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2008 report. Complementary to the global report, it examines child survival in Asia-Pacific and highlights the need to place child health at the heart of the region’s development and human rights agenda. It also outlines programmes, policies and partnerships that can accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

The State of Latin American and Caribbean Children 2008

The State of Latin American and Caribbean Children 2008 is a regional edition of UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2008 report. Complementary to the global report, it examines child survival in Latin America and the Caribbean and highlights the need to place child health at the heart of the region’s development and human rights agenda. It also outlines programmes, policies and partnerships that can accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

For More Unicef Reports- Check to see how your Region is doing.