It's called How are you? the thirteenth edition of the Atlas of Childhood at Risk by Save the Children, a snapshot of the living conditions of children and young people in our country, from which the strong impact of socio-economic, educational and territorial inequalities on the health and psychophysical well-being of the new generations emerges.
The publication - full of data, maps and interviews - highlights the intertwining of inequalities and health that the pandemic has amplified, and the many, too many different faces of a health service that is often "national" only on paper, due to serious regional differences.
The Atlas also focuses on the effects of the pandemic in the two-year period 2020-2021. During that time period, vaccinations in the first months of life were significantly reduced, and there was a drastic decrease in paediatric cancer diagnoses, which decreased by 33% in 2020. Even before Covid-19, the number of family clinics had been dwindling: between 2014 and 2020 there was a reduction of over 6% in the number of active centres and in the two-year period 2018-2019 the average number of users per single facility was 32,325 people, well above the 20,000 established by Italian Law (34/1996), and with a wide regional disparity. A survey conducted by the Italian Paediatrics Society between March 2020 and March 2021 in nine Italian regions reveals a 39.5% increase in hospitalisations for childhood neuropsychiatric disease.
Other data reveal that in the first months of 2022, more than one in four secondary school and university students had experiences of eating disorders, 15.5% of acts of self-harm, while 10% used drugs and 12% consumed excessive amounts of alcohol. Excluding Covid-19 restrictions and going out to school, 5.6% of students report never leaving their home or room for extracurricular activities.
The Atlas is available on the Save the Children website under the "Publications" section.
Other materials and news can be found on this site on the topics of Condition of children and adolescents, Health and Children and Covid-19, accessible from the "Topics" navigation menu.