Experts blame the UK’s record high child death rate on a growing poverty gap, as new statistics show the country falling behind most other western European nations' child survival numbers. The UK's death rate for under-fives is 4.9 out of every 1,000 children born, new figures show. Child mortality statistics developed by The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, and published earlier this month in The Lancet, puts the UK second only to Malta in the number of child deaths in western Europe.
"It's quite true that the NHS is a very successful health system in many ways, but the things that affect children's lives and their chances of death lie in the whole of society - not just in health services," Ingrid Wolfe, of London's Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, told DW.
"One of the most striking things that is happening in the UK is that child poverty is going up, and, perhaps more importantly, inequalities are widening. So the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and there's a lot of evidence to show that's a very unhealthy state of being for children."
"It's quite true that the NHS is a very successful health system in many ways, but the things that affect children's lives and their chances of death lie in the whole of society - not just in health services," Ingrid Wolfe, of London's Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, told DW.
"One of the most striking things that is happening in the UK is that child poverty is going up, and, perhaps more importantly, inequalities are widening. So the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and there's a lot of evidence to show that's a very unhealthy state of being for children."
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