x xf xf xf xfxf x - St Clements University

perceived little connection between their health and safety problems and their alcohol and
drug use.
2.4.3 Health issues
The United Nations' Year of the Child and its Declaration on the Rights of Children
focused much attention on the situation of street children in less developed countries
throughout the world. The situation includes violence directed toward street children,
such as police brutality, frequent imprisonment, and even (in at least one case) killings of
street children that are informally sanctioned and abetted by officials and the media. In
their haste to condemn these intolerable conditions in the less developed nations, many
commentators in the more developed countries have all too easily forgotten that the
conditions of children in their own countries have steadily deteriorated in the past decade.
There is every reason to expect that street children experience exceptionally widespread
health problems, an expectation that is borne out by what little research exists. For
instance, there are studies that compared the health problems of 110 street children in Los
Angeles to those of 655 children in normal family home who had been seen in the same
health clinics. Among the conclusions of the study were that street youth are at greater
risk for a wide variety of medical problems and of health-compromising behaviours
including suicide and depression, prostitution, and drug use.
It has been noted that more widespread among the street children were genitourinary
problems, hepatitis, asthma, serious respiratory infections (pneumonia), lice, drug abuse,
and trauma. Life on the streets or even in institutions, such as refuges or detention
centres, away from family, caring adults, and normal routines, has been shown to be
hazardous to health. About 75% of this group have sought medical care since becoming
homeless.
The high medical risk of homelessness is apparent in the list of medical problems
reported by this group that range from what medical informants emphasize are common
ailments experienced by homeless persons, such as scabies, head lice, foot problems, and
29