Children – the hope of the future

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The rich tradition of Christmas and New Year are still holding strong in Romania, to a great extent due to the Christian belief in the beginning, birth, life. All the holiday events, from “Plugusorul” < traditional procession with a decorated plough> to Carols and the bouquet for New Year’s wishes, have children as their protagonists. The children, and youth, by and large, are the heart and soul of winter holidays, they symbolize the Christian hope into a better future. They update the Christian appeal “Let the little children come to me!” as a sacred wish to become a symbol of the future, and therefore, an expression of the truth that each historic stage is defined, in the first place, by its message to the future. This belief in birth, the beginning of childhood, is our main biography as a nation, mainly in this day and age when our accountability to what is going to happen in the future grows increasingly dull.

Following the example of our political leaders, the present is our main concern, a carpe diem both egotistic and savage at the same time, and equally blameable future-wise, to the children, first and foremost, whose destiny is increasingly muddled and unsure.The uncertainty of some to come after us is obvious with each comprehensive analysis. Domestic and international syntheses attest to Romania having 30,000 children sick with TB and holds the highest infant mortality rate EU-wide, many of the death being due to respiratory conditions, including pneumonia. The TB vaccination has ceased for a long time from lack of injected serum, along with the domestic vaccine production at the Cantacuzino Institute in Bucharest coming to a halt, on orders from abroad. Many adverse reactions were noted to imported vaccines, which lend to a temporary suspension in vaccine administration, and TB expansion.Drug use compounds the problem. While stores selling drugs have been closed down, drugs continue being distributed under the counter, with police often unable to step in, children passing out in schools, wounded or even killed during drug deals, and on to drug-fighting structures that have to give up on drug use prevention, and contend themselves with distributing disposable syringes instead, so that needle-sharing, at least, is not habitual anymore. The saying “After us, the deluge!” makes its way into the domestic decisions of the political parties. Should it originate in the lack of interest toward the future, the burden of the frequent tragedies, its projection becomes increasingly uncertain? This dramatic alternative cannot be ruled out, being known that the demographic collapse in this country could pose the threat of this nation disappearing within 150 to 200 years. Often neglected studies and research show that no fewer than 22 M abortions have been performed in this country since 1958, which means the country’s population equivalent in 1990. Abortions in this country add up to nearly 1 M a year. Correlating this figure with other tragic realities including the increased frequency of cardiovascular diseases among children, as well as respiratory, kidney diseases and diabetes, and even AIDS, makes for a very menacing picture. Meanwhile, the number of Roma rises with a proportion that matches the decline of the rest of the population.This tragic reality cannot be used as an anti-abortion argument, obviously. The women are the only ones entitle to decide on the fate of their own unborn baby. This means that the poverty state of more than half of Romania’s population is the chief cause of the high abortion rate in this country. It is poverty that prevents 34 pc of Romanian women to never visit a doctor. Poverty is also responsible for the lack of financial and transportation means, or of doctors. This is also at the root of another tragedy represented by the increasingly high infant mortality rate in rural communities, and that exactly because doctors often emigrate abroad in search of better pay and practice conditions. A phenomenon often painful for emigrants as well, yet, understandable, given the health budget revolves around a paltry 3-4 pc GDP, while the European average stands at 11 pc.Education is another field where scarcity is more than obvious. Physical and moral education overlaps physical and moral health , both of them outside the focus of government people’s attention. This explains the expansion of  all sort of diseases, which is reflected in the dropout and illiteracy rate, which now reaches 20 pc. Moreover, 2 out of 5 pupils have difficulty reading and counting, even when they are 14-15 years old, in junior high namely. And since most of them are in the rural environment, where many schools were closed down from lack of pupils and teaching staff. Little wonder the painful educational gap. Over 45 pc of Romania’s population lives in rural communities, yet hardly 8-10 pc of rural children go to senior high school and only 1-2 pc become part of the student population.