Five children die unnecessarily every day of conditions such as asthma, meningitis and pneumonia because NHS care for young people is badly organised and dangerously inadequate, the leader of Britain's 11,000 specialists in children's health warns. About 2,000 children a year lose their lives because of an array of problems, which means the UK has some of the worst death rates among children up to the age of 14 in Europe, says the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health . Branding the situation "a major crisis", Hilary Cass said that sick children were at greater risk of dying because some GPs lacked paediatric skills, expertise was absent in too many small paediatric units, and there was a serious shortage of consultants. The college believes a lack of senior paediatric doctors is so acute that the safety of treatment cannot be guaranteed at every unit. Cass urges the NHS to instigate radical changes in how it treats children to reduce preventable deaths.

Pray: for sick children and those who care for them and for an inmprovement in service provision in paediatrics. (Jer.8:22)

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/13/preventable-child-deaths-nhs