Threats to children of paramount importance

I COULDN’T sleep the night of April 6. I kept thinking about the welfare of children in general, not just the children gassed in Syria, particularly the threats to the welfare of children in the United States:

1. Curtailment or elimination of Medicaid, which provides health care for 8.9 million children.

2. Elimination of the Affordable Care Act affecting preventive care for families and children and access to health care in general.

3. Cutting funds for after-school programs for 1.6 million children.

4. Children with insecure food at some point in the past year: 7.8 percent of U.S. households with children — 3 million households.

5. Cuts to the EPA, the primary agency responsible for a safe, healthy environment including lead exposure that affects 2.6 percent of preschool children, exposure to toxins from toxic waste sites that decrease school performance, etc.

6. Cuts to the National Institute of Health, the primary agency responsible for health research.

7. Cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

8. Disregard of threats to a stable climate — something that can take hundreds if not thousands of years to reverse, thus affecting many generations of children. 9. Cuts to funding of public education. 10. Children living in poverty — 14.8 million, 21 percent.

11. Several hundred thousand children who lost one or both parents to deportation, perhaps almost one half of a million to nearly a million in recent years. And 5.3 million children living with unauthorized parents.

These threats to children are a far greater threat to our national security than ISIS or (Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-) Assad’s use of chemical weapons, not that these should be ignored or condoned. We must not lose track of what we need to do here in the United States for our children. DOYNE LOYD, MD Bloomfield