The Imperiled Children

"Eight years ago, when three women with breast cancer appeared on the family talk show "Nedeljom Popodne", I was astonished. In fact, the host of the show brought in the witch doctor who "treated" their breast cancer in front of the cameras. I was shocked both as a woman and as a doctor. The direction of our roaming became clear to me then. After that, the real flood of sorcerers, faith healers and witch doctors emerged. This country obviously could not offer anything else, so it offered us this sort of medical "treatment", both on television and in other media. It is terrible, and the professional doctors never raised their voice, nor did any reaction come from the Serbian Doctors' Association.

On the contrary, one of the former presidents of the Association spoke this way when some of the colleagues drew his attention to this: "It doesn't matter. They are paying the television certain amount of money, that money goes to the state, the state becomes richer that way."

This shocking incident was told to me by the assistant professor MD Ivanka Gajic, the teacher of social medicine at the School of Dental Medicine in Belgrade, during the tribunal "The Health, Healthcare and Doctors" organized by the newspaper Republika. In the interview for the Vreme weekly with MD Gajic we could not avoid commenting on this incident and the reaction of the former president of the Serbian Doctors' Association who is, in an even greater irony, a well known gynecologist and academician, and over the last few years also a very active patriot...

MD Ivanka Gajic says that many parameters show that the health of this nation, including the health of its youngest ones, is seriously imperiled:

"If Yugoslavia is the first in Europe in the number of cardiac, vascular and cerebral diseases, if this number increases each year, we have reason to say that the situation is alarming. While in all developed countries the rate of these diseases, as well as of the malignant and respiratory ones decreases, here it increases. The health condition of children has dramatically worsened. The drastic divisions in the economy are reflecting themselves on the health; some ten years ago our children were, on the average, taller than the American children of the same age! Today our children are at a serious disadvantage from the very beginning: the head perimeter of the newly born has decreased for half of a centimeter in the last seven years, the average decrease in weight of male children is 150 grams, and of female children even 300 grams! The death rate of the newly born has increased too, and in Belgrade it is 17 % above the republic's average!"

In the 70s and 80s a "considerably accelerated growth" was noticed with the recruits, even by 3 to 5 centimeters, and the "other parameters of the nutrition condition" as the researchers call it, were also improved. Today, 17 to 18 percent of the young men that come to the recruiting commission show the signs of malnutrition. The percentage of the fat ones is the same. Those are the official data from the Military Medical Academy.

MD Gajic says that the research in Belgrade shows that even 10% of the children have high blood pressure, 8% have increased percentages of fat in the blood, and the percentage of children with malnutrition symptoms has also increased. Even 80% of the children of school age suffer from anemia, which is the very serious problem. The research from 1997 shows that children, especially those of seven years of age, are several centimeters shorter than children of the same age were before the 90s. This means, explains MD Gajic, that the children were deprived in the age when the proper nutrition was very important factor of their growth and development.

If the health picture is so somber in Belgrade, what is it like in the poorer areas of this country? The years of war, sanctions, hyperinflation and the deepest social and economic crisis - when the fat and rich politicians sent us word that we would "eat the roots" and that we can live without bread but not without the state, that we could endure under sanctions another hundred or thousand years - have stricken the worst those that are the least to blame - the children.

MD Ivanka Gajic, also a nutrition expert, stresses that the proper nutrition may bring the decrease of the cardiac and vascular diseases by one third, but also of some malignant diseases (breast cancer and colon cancer). The greatest risk factor, and there are 200 of those, is the fat content in blood. If changes of this kind occur already in childhood, it is certain that they will have serious effects on health in the mature age. We need wise policy in this area: to ensure the consumption and production of healthy food. MD Gajic sees the great responsibility of the mass media, above all the electronic ones, in this area. She says that the role of the educator should be put in the hands of the experienced experts.

In the meantime, some doctors are more often seen to advertise nice and expensive pots. The health of the people and healthy nutrition do not seem to interest anyone... Perhaps, as that academician put it, the television and the state have greater benefit from it.