By Mlamli Maneli

These and other concerning statistics have been cited at the launch of the Child Gauge 2024, an annual publication released by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute.

The 17th edition, titled Enhancing Early Childhood Development, speaks to investing in prenatal care and support for families if the country is to achieve its developmental goals.

Children should be at the centre of every policy decision.

This means among others, investment in the health, development, nutrition and care of pregnant women, infants and young children.

The publication serves as an important resource for all sectors of society to improve the lives of SA children.

And researchers such as Linda Richter, Distinguished Professor at Centre for Excellence for Early Childhood Development at Wits University says early development interventions should be made even before a child is born.

“For me the critical thing is from conception. So, we need to really look after pregnant women, their families so that they have their support. Birth, during pregnancy and birth many developmental disabilities occur. So, if we want to prevent children needing special care we need to give much more attention. And I think it communicates that we care about women and children so i gave one example, in our country its policy that a woman leave a delivery centre six hours after giving birth, if anybody has had a child, they know the last thing you feel up to doing is getting up. Taking your bag picking up this tiny precious parcel and walking to a taxi rank, a bust stop, a train station.”

Authors of the Child Gauge 2024, say South Africa has higher infant and maternal mortality figures than it should have for the socio-economic level of the country.

And while SA is unique in comparable countries in its universal, free preschool year, too many children are stunted, a sign of chronic malnutrition.

Academics say less than half of four to five year old’s attending early learning programmes are developmentally on track.

University of Cape Town Associate Professor, Wiedaad Slemming is co-author of the report.

“It really is a comprehensive approach to early childhood development encompassing all aspects of childhood development and health and wellbeing, and so its not just about early learning programmes or centre-based education like often we hear people talking about. It’s really making sure that pregnant women access ante natal care early that they get the care and support that they require during their pregnancies’, that we have support for the parents when the baby is born, that they come for their baby visits, etc so its really a much more comprehensive approach than just making sure that we have enough preschools for children and that they get good quality learning in pre-schools, because that’s way to late. we have got to start earlier.”

Other key interventions cites include restoring the value of the Child Support Grant to the food poverty line and introducing income support for pregnant women, strengthening support from community and faith-based organisations and strengthening referral systems and care pathways to ensure that children and families are able to access the services and support they need.

--SABC--