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A CHILD has tragically died after their diabetes went undiagnosed during the pandemic.
Professor Adrian Edwards, a parttime GP and Professor of General Practice at Cardiff University, said the child was a patient at his practice.
Prof Edwards warned that delays in seeking help and diagnosis could have tragic consequences.
He issued the warning while speaking to the Senedd committee about the effect of the pandemic on children and young people’s mental and physical health.
He told the Echo: “What this translates into both for physical and mental health problems is delay in diagnosis or presentation and management and that can have all sorts of impacts, depending on what you are talking about, but likely to lead to more severe illness, sometimes dangerously so and sometimes tragically so.
“I don’t want to describe too much about individual situations but we experienced in my practice in Torfaen a child died with undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes. And we can think of other illnesses like severe asthma and mortality.”
There are two types of diabetes. Type 1 causes the level of glucose in the blood to become too high, which means the body can’t produce enough insulin to control it.
People with Type 1 generally need insulin injections at a regular basis. Type 2 is linked to age and weight.
Professor Edwards was joined by other medical experts to give evidence to the Senedd Children Young People and Education Committee.
They claimed there had been a decrease in the number of children and young people seeking help for medical problems, which they have put down to a combination with not wanting to burden the NHS and coronavirus fears.
There also seems to have been a rise in mental health problems, although there was a lack of Walesonly data for this, the committee heard.
Dr David Tuthill, Consultant Paediatrician and Officer for Wales at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said Covid itself had a minimal risk for children’s health, but the effect of the pandemic and lockdown had had impacts.
He said he understood no child in Wales has died from Covid but his impression was that there had been more delays in referrals for children with other medical problems than among adults.
Some children had also been “harmed” by being unnecessarily shielded.
Lack of opportunity to play outside, go to school, socialise or take part in group activities has affected their mental and physical health in various other ways, too.
Dr Tuthill predicted a rise in obesity as a result of children being less physically active and possibly snacking more at home in lockdown.
“Mental health, I think, has been severely affected. Last winter in the Children’s Hospital (for Wales) I (usually) had 30 children in (the ward) and 10 or 15 of those were babies with bronchiolitis.
“I am in today with 19 children on the ward, eight of which are predominantly mental health, that is twice what it would have been before.”
He said early data from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health suggested paediatric bed occupancy across the UK had risen from 5% for mental health issues before the pandemic to 12%.
Safeguarding referrals, many of which came from schools before school closures, had also dropped by between two thirds and three quarters since the pandemic began, which was “worrying”.
Professor Ann John, Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Swansea University Medical School and Chair of the National Advisory Group to Welsh Government on the prevention of suicide and self-harm, said some children had been less stressed not being in school.
Any rise in mental health issues might be among a separate group of children to those who sought help previously – those who might be missing school and group support. This should be looked at more widely, she said.
And she warned using the phrase “catch up” to look at how to fill gaps left by schools being closed risked making some children feeling they had fallen behind, making any potential problems worse.
Rather than academic “catch up” summer activities to help children re-engage socially and physically should be looked at.
She said it was important to start a more positive way of looking at how to support young people postpandemic.