Lhe health of the child has figured in recent years among the claimed priorities of successive governments, thus underlining the need to act in prevention from an early age. In particular, the key periods of pregnancy and the first thousand days were highlighted. Flagship measures were announced, such as compulsory vaccination of children under 2 (2018), a “roadmap” on the prevention of obesity through physical activity (2019), an approach for the “health-promoting school” (2020), a national strategy to limit exposure to endocrine disruptors (2021 )…
Unfortunately, there were no structural measures to support prevention professionals. A review of this period shows the success of the implementation of compulsory vaccination of young children and the creation of a first thousand days information website. The other measures for children have remained too much of an announcement effect.
The Ségur de la santé adopted in 2020 allowed partial salary catch-up for hospital professionals; he forgot professionals in the field of early childhood and school age, involved in prevention while doctors begin their career there with salaries 40% lower than those of their colleagues in hospitals or health centers. It was a great disappointment not to have witnessed a sufficiently ambitious revitalization of maternal and child protection (PMI) inspired by the Peyron report (2019), because to act with young children, it is still necessary to strengthen the structures that accompany and take care of them.
Serious deficiencies
As for the educational path in health at school, it is to this day largely a dead letter: the High Council for Equality between Women and Men underlines, for example, the serious shortcomings in this area while the law provides for a sexuality education at the rate of at least three annual sessions by age group.
The usual health problems of early childhood are well known, they concern in particular overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, overconsumption of screens, cavities, uncorrected visual disturbances, with a significant social gradient, i.e. that is to say affecting much more frequently the children of workers than the children of managers. These social inequalities in health call for an energetic policy of prevention from an early age. Not everything is medical: it is necessary to tackle the societal determinants detrimental to health, physical, psychological, social, environmental, cultural, by putting on the agenda of each ministry the impact of its policy in in terms of population health. However, this cannot be done without competent and experienced health workers in the field as a corollary of vigorous action against the determinants harmful to health. Thus, it is essential to better support the associations in the field involved in this area and to revitalize the prevention services whose vitality depends on the impetus given by public policies.
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