Children Become Victims When Clinics Are Closed

* I remain appalled at the county’s decision to close nearly all of its pediatric clinics that are providing preventive medical care to so many of our poor. I cannot believe the lack of vocal public sentiment to this closure of such critical services that will eventually effect all of us. Perhaps too many of the populace feel we are simply closing certain doors to illegal aliens or others we deem undeserving of public funds. We must realize that many of the children are from families who can no longer afford health insurance, and were, until being laid-off, employed taxpayers like many of us.

Who is now going to treat the screaming 1-year-old with beet-red eardrums causing excruciating pain because of an infection? Who will instruct mothers that if their 2-month-old child has any fever they must obtain emergency medical care (if they can indeed obtain it) as it may be a sign of a fatal (and not rare) infection? Will these children receive their meningitis and other vaccines that have dramatically cut their death rates in recent years? Where will they be tested for tuberculosis, a disease which already is becoming rampant here? All of our children will have an increased chance of becoming victims of these preventable diseases as they are communicable to all.

Instead of offering only the needy fewer services, perhaps we should all share poorer health standards: collect the trash every other week, cut our Sheriff’s Department in half, abandon our already understaffed libraries, decrease health and other services for our supervisors and other county employees. We are all about to become citizens of a Third World city, based upon public health standards. Please let us not make our children suffer for our errors in financing our government.

BURTON SOKOLOFF, M.D.

Tarzana

Dr. Sokoloff is a pediatrician with offices in Canoga Park and Agoura Hills.