To formulate recommendations to promote strategies for relevant and feasible actions to address these concerns at the national and community levels. To identify the role of individual pediatricians and national pediatric societies in the promotion of health of the girl child. The plight of the girl child was reviewed, and workshop participants were reminded that in many parts of the world the girl child from conception to death is exposed to all sorts of discrimination, abuse, and exploitation. The chance for the female foetus to be selectively aborted is very great in some countries where amniocentesis and ultrasound can predict the foetus's gender in utero . In countries with one or two children due to family and national policies, son preference is practised and the chances for selective abortion is very great.
Female babies are also prone to be abandoned or killed at birth.
Many are deliberately underfed and neglected in deference to their male siblings. Handicaps and illnesses are conveniently not addressed, to facilitate the demise of female children. They are deprived of emotional and social stimulation, resulting in failure to thrive and low self-esteem. Schooling is often denied girls, and they are either made to work at home to look after their families, or to work outside in hazardous situations. Many are sexually exploited or married in their early teens.