Health ministry seeks to bolster child healthcare

LIMITATIONS:
If pediatrics are not improved, very sick kids might have to go abroad for treatment, making it a national security issue, the minister of health said

• By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

The Ministry of Health and Welfare is seeking to bolster Taiwan’s pediatric healthcare network after the COVID-19 pandemic showed that many hospitals have limited resources devoted to child healthcare, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said yesterday.

The minister made the remark at a Child Health Alliance Taiwan forum in Taipei on COVID-19’s effects on children and their families.

Although the pandemic appears to be nearing an end, challenges remain, such as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, health complications in children and how to handle remote-learning, which need to be solved by experts, Hsueh said.

Photo: CNA

Among the issues is a reduction in child healthcare resources, he said.

“During the pandemic, we found that many regional hospitals had abandoned their pediatric divisions or had shrunk them as much as possible,” he said.

Many hospitals offer only minimum pediatric outpatient services, with hardly enough capacity for child hospitalizations or to treat children with severe illnesses, especially if several emergency situations were to occur simultaneously, raising concerns about the fragility of the nation’s pediatric healthcare network, he said.

The ministry had allocated NT$1.1 billion (US$35.15 million) to improve the nation’s pediatric healthcare network, but Hsueh said that the funding should be increased because the issue is too important.

“I am worried that if the problem is not solved, in 10 years, children who develop certain severe diseases would need to be transported abroad to receive proper treatment,” he said. “It is a national security issue.”

Although the Taiwan Pediatric Association helped a lot throughout the pandemic by sharing physicians’ clinical experience through online courses, saving many children’s lives, the same method might not be practical for other types of severe outbreaks, he said.

After becoming minister in July, Hsueh said he proposed that the nation’s pediatric healthcare network be improved.

Taiwan should establish core pediatric hospitals capable of treating difficult illnesses in children and training pediatricians to treat severe illnesses, he said.

Each administrative region should have at least one designated pediatric emergency hospital capable of dealing with pediatric emergencies, to reduce the risk of delaying treatment caused by referring critical cases to other hospitals, he added.

Primary care clinics should also have pediatric systems that designate specific doctors to care for infants as soon as they are born, he said, adding that doctors can follow up on a child’s health, as well as their vaccination progress.