Child Health in the Shadow of the Pandemic: a Cross-sectional Study

Objective: To identify families who had delayed their children's chronic disease follow-up or postponed their children's health follow-up due to the Covid19 pandemic and to inform them about the importance of the issue. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted between March and May 2021. Families with children between the ages of 0 and 18 who were registered within the Alt & imath;nda & gbreve; Municipality service area and who agreed to participate in the study were contacted by phone and asked the questionnaire questions. Results: A total of 283 families participated in the study. The median age of the children was 84 months. 32.9% of the families lived in regions with a low socioeconomic development level and 40.6% of them lived in regions with a high socioeconomic development level. 37.5% of mothers stated that they only had only been to family health centers for vaccinations. It was found that 1.8% of infants and children had not received vitamin D prophylaxis and 1.8% had not taken iron prophylaxis regularly, 2.8% had delayed vaccinations, 0.7% had experienced vaccine rejection, and 2.1% had not taken a hearing test. 27.2% of the participants had not been screened for anemia and 45.9% had not had eye examinations at all. It was determined that 64.3% of these school-age children and adolescents had not had their annual health follow-ups. There was a chronic disease in 16.3% of the children who participated in the study. It was determined that 78.3% of these children had not gone to health controls and 10.8% of them had stopped their medication due to the fear of catching COVID-19 in hospitals. Conclusion: It was determined that there have been significant disruptions in child health follow-ups and chronic disease follow-ups due to the pandemic. It is necessary to raise awareness about the importance of chronic disease follow-up and health follow-up for children.