Kids ,Sun Cream ,Skin Cancer and Cost. (Childcare in general)

Member Name: dukecrook

Product:	Childcare in general
Date:	04/08/02 (1175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: less chance of people developing skin cancer in later life, help for those who need it, n/a

Disadvantages: n/a, n/a, n/a

As every parent knows, the formative years of our children's lives, are when we need to protect them most, the years when they have neither the understanding nor the means to fully protect themselves from the everyday dangers that face us all and in particular, the issue of skin cancer and suncream.

Now like me, you have all probably read or heard the reports in the media relating to the effects of the suns u. v rays on our skin and especially our children's skin, and also like me, i imagine that all parents who have heard of these have been suitably worried and taken the reported precautions of providing high factor suncream for our children to be applied for their protection whenever they require it.

Which brings me to my point, The cheapest high factor suncream available to us in the area we live (south east kent),is around £6-£7, the higher factor brand named creams costing anything up to £11? My two children are aged two and four and during the average summer months we easily use at least one 100ml tube a month, so over a four month period we have to pay usually around £47.00 to protect our children, just as the government health departments suggest.

But what if you have 4 children, and are living on your own, who struggles to find enough money to feed and clothe her children never mind finding around £94.00 extra in the summer months to protect her family, so what's the answer, keep her kids indoors for 4 months during daytime?,or make them always wear long sleeves and long trousers, along with a large hat to protect their faces. Now i don't claim to be an expert on skin cancer by any means, but if there is a risk of your children getting caught in a flu epidemic in winter, the government will pay for an injection to lessen the chances of them catching it, and flu in the mainstream is a relatively short term virus, but skin cancer is something that takes a lot longer to develop and when it does it hits a lot harder
.

So the message as it stands is, if you cant afford to protect your children, then keep them indoors in the summer months or let them go out and face the risks. Surely this policy is wrong, and surely it is in the Governments own interest to provide a high factor suncream on the NHS for the children of familles who cant afford to pay these prices to protect their kids, or later pick up the NHS bill to treat the resulted casualty's of this 'If You Cant Afford To Buy Fry' culture, we are living with now.

i would appreciate any thoughts or comments on this subject.

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