More than 18 million children across Europe suffer abuse, making it the leading cause of health inequality, a new report from the World Health Organisation says today.
Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe, described the levels of maltreatment as a “public health concern, and not solely a criminal justice and social issue”.
The report on preventing child maltreatment found that the abuse lead to the deaths of about 852 under 15s every year but it also estimated that the prevalence of maltreatment is much higher, ranging from 29.1% for emotional abuse, to 22.9% for physical abuse, to 13.4% for sexual abuse in girls and 5.7% in boys.
The European Report on Preventing Child Maltreatment, released at the 63rd session of the Regional Committee for Europe, is worrying reading for policymakers looking to implement Health 2020, the new European health policy framework.
“Child abuse is preventable through a mainstreamed public health approach, an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss,” said Jakab.
“In the coming months we will prepare a set of measures that countries can take to address this, and we are ready to assist with the implementation.”
Calling for more prevention programmes, Jakab said that working with at-risk families, such as home visits to provide parenting support, parenting programmes and pre-school education, would help to reduce the amount of abuse.
Programmes to prevent shaken baby syndrome, reducing the availability of alcohol, and intensive social and medical support to high-risk families are effective.
She said that as well as having a devastating impact on young people’s lives, child maltreatment had far-reaching social and economic costs that ran into tens of billions of Euros.
It could be responsible for as much as a quarter of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, behaviour problems, suicide attempts, self-harm and illicit drug use.
Maltreatment of children also affects their schooling and is more likely to lead to lower educational achievement and poorer employment prospects.
Other links with child maltreatment are risky sexual behaviour and the development of obesity and other non-communicable diseases.
The report found that young, single, poor parents with low education levels and who are living in deprived communities may be more likely to maltreat their children. There is also a strong link between child maltreatment and alcohol and drug abuse in the family, parenting stress and domestic violence.
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