Early Childhood Developmental Delays in Western Kenya - Dissertation Example

There is an increasing population of children with a global developmental delay because of reducing child mortality rates hence many children are surviving and manifesting delay. This is because the same social environment factors that are associated with higher mortality rates also tend to increase developmental delays among survivors (Rj 1990). Child mortality rates have reduced by 22% in the low and middle-income countries (Scherzer et al. 2012) This is due to campaigns to eradicate the impact of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and Malnutrition among other conditions.

The percentage reduction that has been observed still falls below the United Nations target but this reduction is expected to accelerate (Scherzer et al. 2012). Concurrent with the reduction in child mortality, child development outcomes should be emphasized, necessitating studies to establish the prevalence of global delays in populations and factors associated with developmental delays. Children assure future healthy sustainable society, hence they require a nurturing and safe environment to reach their maximum potential.

In the first three years of life, the child undergoes rapid and dynamic development. They mature interrelated body functions that build upon another in the areas of cognition, physical and socio-emotional abilities (Ali 2013). Disturbance to processes of development due to the community or ecological or individual risk factors may compromise the development of the child and may impact not only on their quality of life but also on their future health, income and ability to reach their potential (Singh-Manoux et al. 2004).In order to deal with this silently emerging problem of an increasing number of children who will not be able to reach important milestones in time, there is a need to identify them and intervene early.

Elaborate strategies to identify these children early are not just a developing nation problem (Scherzer et al. 2012), in the developed nations where standardized screening tools exist, developmental screening is not routinely done until there are obvious delays. Even in the United States, there is scarce data on the screening, and available data suggested that nationally only 19.1% received screening and this varied from 10.7% to 47% across states(Bethell et al. 2011). This shows that screening for developmental delays are unpopular the world over calling for unified efforts by individual nations to popularize screening tools Reasons that have been highlighted for the low popularity of developmental screening includes; most health staff who work with children are trained to treat acute illnesses, they have limited interest, sensitization or training in child development or recognition of early developmental problems (Sices et al. 2003). Many parents are neither aware that they need to access the developmental status of their children nor are informed of the impact of the developmental deficit on their children(Halfon et al. 2004). The skew of interest towards child survivorship presently must be adjusted to include emphasis in child development outcomes.

The population at risk and incidence of developmental delays continues to rise because of emphasis on survival. There are a number of tools that have been developed for use in the developed countries(Rydz et al. 2006); Examples Kilifi tool and the Malawi tool (Abubakar et al. 2008, Gladstone et al. 2010). Some of these tools require supplies, training and takes a lot of time hence they are rarely used outside of research settings.