Abstract
Children and the knowledge of taking care of them, pediatrics, are faced
with growing challenges. With the advancement of medical sciences, pediatrics is
becoming a group of subspecialties. This could lead to improving the care and
management of pediatric disorders, however, transdisciplinary management should not
be ignored.
Although the health status of children has improved over the past years, still
preventable child deaths are occurring, especially in low-income countries. The
increased sexual abuse, discrimination, racism, increased intercountry adoption,
malnutrition, environmental hazards like arsenic contamination, pornography, and
surrogacy are among the most important current challenges to children’s health.
Worldwide vaccination coverage has declined from 86% in 2019 to 83% in 2020, and
the number of completely unvaccinated children increased by 3.4 million.
Approximately, 1 billion children are dealing with multidimensional poverty all around
the world among which at least 356 million of them live in extreme poverty, and 100
million more children plunged into poverty as a result of COVID-19.
In this chapter, we will review the most important challenges of children’s health and
pediatrics with a focus on social and mental health problems.