UK Is Raising One of Its Unhealthiest Generations in Decades, Paediatricians Warn

Britain is raising one of its unhealthiest generations of children in decades, the country's leading body of children's doctors warned this week, in a stark report that found young people's health either declining or completely stalled across every major measure.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), publishing an update to its landmark State of Child Health report, said widening inequalities, gaps in data and years of chronic underinvestment were combining to put the wellbeing of a generation at risk. One senior paediatrician described the findings as a "national embarrassment" for one of the world's wealthiest countries.

Vaccination emerged as one of the most alarming areas. Only 84% of children in the UK now receive both recommended doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine by the age of five — well below the World Health Organization's 95% target for the herd immunity needed to keep outbreaks at bay, and the poorest performance of any G7 nation. Falling coverage has coincided with a resurgence of measles in several countries, a disease that can cause serious complications in young children.

The report catalogued a broader deterioration. More than one in three children aged 10 and 11 — some 36% — is now overweight or obese, storing up risks of diabetes and heart disease for adulthood. One in five young people between 8 and 16 has a probable mental health disorder, and hospital admissions for both asthma and mental health conditions are climbing. Most starkly, children living in the most deprived areas are four times more likely to die from asthma than their wealthier peers.

The paediatricians said the pattern reflected deep social inequalities as much as clinical failings, with poverty, poor housing, inadequate nutrition and stretched services all weighing on outcomes. The gap between rich and poor children, they warned, has widened rather than narrowed. They called for sustained investment in prevention, better collection of health data, and a coordinated national strategy to reverse the slide.

The findings pile pressure on Britain's incoming government, which will inherit an overstretched National Health Service and mounting demands to prioritize child health after years in which it slipped down the agenda. The college urged ministers to treat children's health as an economic issue as well as a moral one, noting that untreated problems in childhood tend to become far costlier to address later.

Doctors warned that without urgent action, the consequences would follow today's children well into adulthood — a slow-burning crisis whose full costs, they said, would not become clear until it is too late to easily reverse.