Childhood mortality varies threefold across different UK local authorities, report shows

The United Kingdom should feel “profoundly ashamed” of its record on child health, the chief medical officer for England has said.

Much more needed to be done for regional variation to be eliminated and for national performance to match that achieved by the best countries in Europe, Sally Davies told a press conference to introduce a new report on the health of young people up to the age of 25.1 Some of the statistics, she asserted, were “absolutely shocking.”

She said that five more children under the age of 14 die every day than would be the case if the UK matched the death rate in Sweden, which has the lowest rate in 11 European countries, and that childhood mortality between the ages of 12 months and 17 years varied threefold across different local authorities in the UK. …