🧑‍⚕️ Pediatrician

A pediatrician is a doctor who looks after the health of infants, children and teenagers. The word comes from the Greek pais (child) and iatros (doctor). In ISCO-08 a pediatrician is a specialist physician: the work requires a university degree in basic medical education and postgraduate clinical training in the specialty.

Age limits vary. In Commonwealth countries pediatrics covers patients up to 18 (in India, up to 12); the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends seeing a pediatrician up to age 21. In a 2017 policy statement, the AAP stresses that the upper limit is hard to define clearly and that arbitrary age limits should not be set.

On the milk theme, the pediatrician touches on infant feeding. WHO recommends starting breastfeeding within the first hour after birth, giving only breast milk for the first 6 months, introducing safe complementary food from 6 months and continuing breastfeeding up to two years and beyond.

Mentions of children's diseases already appear in the Hippocratic corpus of the 5th century BCE. The Swede Nils Rosén von Rosenstein is considered the founder of modern pediatrics. The first generally recognized children's hospital, the Hôpital des Enfants Malades, opened in Paris in 1802, and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London in 1852. Abraham Jacobi introduced the word "pediatrics" into English in 1859 and in 1860 became the world's first professor of pediatrics.

Why it matters to you. On a child's diet, the NHS directly advises not cutting foods out of their diet without advice from a doctor or dietitian. WHO's advice of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding is a general guide for a conversation with the doctor, not personal advice.