Article Text
Abstract
Despite the extent and magnitude of violence against children in South Africa, political and financial investments to prevent violence against children remain low. A recent costing study investigating the social burden and economic impact of violence against children in South Africa found notable reductions to mental and physical health outcomes in the population if children were prevented from experiencing violence, neglect and witnessing family violence. The results showed, among others, that drug abuse in the entire population could be reduced by up to 14% if sexual violence against children could be prevented, self-harm could be reduced by 23% in the population if children did not experience physical violence, anxiety could be reduced by 10% if children were not emotionally abused, alcohol abuse could be reduced by 14% in women if they did not experience neglect as children, and lastly, interpersonal violence in the population could be reduced by 16% if children did not witness family violence. The study further estimated that the cost of inaction in 2015 amounted to nearly 5% of the country’s gross domestic product. These findings show that preventing children from experiencing and witnessing violence can help to strengthen the health of a nation by ensuring children reach their full potential and drive the country’s economy and growth. The paper further discusses ways in which preventing and ending violence against children may be prioritised in South Africa through, for instance, intersectoral collaboration and improving routine monitoring data, such as through the sustainable development goals.
- health policies and all other topics
- public health
- other study design
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Handling editor Seye Abimbola
Contributors CH wrote the manuscript. All coauthors provided significant input in the revision and final approval of the manuscript and meet the ICMJE authorship conditions.
Funding This work reported in this paper was funded from a grant from Save the Children Sweden Grant Number 75220290.
Disclaimer The funder has had no role in the study design, analysis and interpretation of the data, in the writing of this manuscript, and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Competing interests Save the Children Sweden provided funding to conduct the costing analysis; however, the funder was not involved in the design and analysis of the study, nor in the conceptualisation or writing of this analysis paper.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement No additional data are available.