If there’s one demographic of Canadians whose needs have been consistently overlooked, disregarded, and downplayed for the past several years, it’s children.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, kids lost virtually all their leisure activities: playgrounds were closed, playdates were cancelled and of course, schools were closed for varying lengths of times, depending on the province. These sacrifices were imposed on them not solely for their sake – we learned relatively early on that most children don’t get severely ill if they contract COVID-19 – but for the sake of more vulnerable adults, and to offer relief to our overburdened hospitals.
We know that children suffered during this time. Research found evidence of student declines in areas such as literacy and math, with the learning loss disproportionately reflected in children from low-income households. Rates of hospitalization for eating disorders among girls aged 10 to 17 soared nearly 60 per cent during the pandemic, according to data compiled by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Recent studies suggest that babies born during the pandemic face higher risks of delays around development and communication than babies born pre-pandemic.
And that’s just the measurable data. Most parents can speak to the unquantifiable distress that their kids endured during the past couple of years of yo-yo lockdowns – the tantrums, the boredom, the anxiety, the disappointment.
We comforted ourselves with the notion that children are resilient, and that they would be rewarded with a return to normal soon enough. With the worst of the pandemic now behind us, we should be making it up to them. But instead, children’s needs are again being overlooked and slowly acted upon.
Indeed, the federal government should be read the riot act over the severity and duration of the perilous shortage of kids’ medicines. Parenting forums noted the scarcity of children’s over-the-counter pain and fever relief as early as back in April; by May, the issue was being reported in the mainstream news. That’s six months of inaction, six months of parents posting SOS notices on Facebook for help finding a box anywhere in their city, six months of trying to force toddlers to swallow applesauce with crushed-up adult Tylenol mixed in.
A month ago, four Conservative MPs called on Health Canada to waive label-language requirements to allow for the import of children’s medicines from foreign countries that are not experiencing shortages, such as the U.S., in the same way it waived those requirements for personal protective equipment and inhalers at the beginning of the pandemic. Last week, Health Canada announced it would indeed take that step, but so far, imported medications have only made their way to hospitals, not pharmacy shelves. In a statement to the National Post, Health Canada said that medication sent to stores for in-home consumption will still have to be labelled in both official languages “to ensure that patients and caregivers understand what medication they are consuming.” Of course, there will be no confusion about dosing at all if parents can’t get their hands on children’s medicines in the first place.
Meanwhile, pediatric units in hospitals are overflowing with patients as administrators plead for help and everyone else looks at their shoes. Some medical experts, including Dr. Fatima Kakkar of Sainte-Justine hospital in Montreal, theorize that the sudden influx of patients as the predictable consequence of kids emerging from isolation and contracting many common respiratory viruses, such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), all at the same time. “It’s not that the RSV is more severe,” she explained on CBC’s Front Burner podcast this past week. “It’s just that instead of having it staggered over the year, and so our hospitals were able to cope, it’s everyone’s getting it at the same time and they’re getting it for the first time ... that’s why it appears it’s such a burden of disease.” Another theory is that COVID-19 has weakened children’s immune systems such that more are requiring hospitalization for common respiratory illnesses, but Dr. Kakkar noted that we lack comprehensive evidence for this theory.
The remedy that some have proposed for ameliorating Canada’s pediatric hospital crisis is to re-institute mask mandates in schools, or reverting back to remote learning (which would just kick the can down the road if Dr. Kakkar’s theory is correct). Both proposed “solutions” again put the burden on children to sacrifice for the failures and poor planning of adults.
If they belonged to any other demographic, these marginalized Canadians would be pounding on doors in Ottawa and in provincial capitals to demand action on medication shortages, on overwhelmed hospitals and on the threat of a return to online learning. But four-year-olds can’t drive or organize, and their advocates are exhausted from years of lockdowns and months of trying to force-feed them crushed-up Tylenol in applesauce.
Robyn Urback