Pacific children

Fathers, let's think of the kids at this difficult time

Researchers found that young Pacific children exhibit and develop more positive behaviours and attitudes when they have involved fathers.

This research is the topic of the Kiribati Language Week instalments of AUT’s Pacific language video series for 2020.

At 6-years-old, behavioural differences were examined amongst children in the PIF study.

Researchers observed most fathers in the study were actively involved in their kids’ lives, and these children were found less likely to have emotional difficulty and to exhibit aggression.

Pacific children take part in World Cup opening ceremony

Kids from American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Tonga and Vanuatu are in Russia this week as part of the sixth annual Football For Friendship programme, which aims to promote essential values embodied by football with the younger generation.

Semisi Semisi from Samoa was selected to attend as a young journalist and said he's had the chance to meet other young people from the likes of China and South Africa.

Pacific kids to feature in World Cup opening ceremony

Children from American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Tonga and Vanuatu are in Russia this week as part of the sixth annual Football For Friendship programme, which aims to promote essential values embodied by football with the younger generation.

Abraham Iniga from Solomon Islands began football at an early age.

"I started playing football when I was five. My dad is a national player for our country and with his help and encouragement, I dream that one day, I can follow my father's footsteps," he said.

Pacific children most at risk from ear infections

New Zealand has high rates of middle ear infections with around 83-thousand GP consultations and five-thousand hospital admissions annually for children under five years old.

Pacific children most at risk from ear infections

RNZ reports New Zealand has high rates of middle ear infections with around 83-thousand GP consultations and five-thousand hospital admissions annually for children under five years old.

Starship hospital specialist Colin Barber said Maori and Pasifika children were disproportionately affected with hospital admissions up to double the number of that for European children.

He said the high rates were thought to be caused by genetics but were now attributed to poverty and overcrowding.

Bread and rice could be making Pacific children overweight.

The study, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, is based on a survey of more than one thousand children born in the year 2000 and their eating habits at ages four and six.

It says despite evidence that about half of the childrens' food intake was energy-dense food like cereals and bread, it couldn't prove a link to obesity.

Research officer, Fa'asisila Savila, says it is the type of bread the children are eating that is the problem.