One million children at risk in poor housing - Shelter

LONDON, Sep 13 (Reuters) More than a million children risk serious illness because their homes are cramped, run-down and damp, a charity report said today.

Housing charity Shelter said children in poor houses are more likely to suffer a range of problems, from disease and interrupted schooling to poverty in later life.

''Children who grow up in bad housing are robbed of their future chances by ill-health, educational under-achievement and devastating insecurity,'' said the report's author Lisa Harker.

Those living in sub-standard homes are 25 per cent more likely to fall ill, she added.

Children in overcrowded homes are 10 times more likely to contract meningitis, while those in damp houses are between one and three times more prone to coughing and wheezing.

Overcrowding has been linked to slow growth in childhood, tuberculosis and a higher risk of heart disease in later life, Shelter said.

Some infants have deformed skulls because they are left on their backs in prams for too long. The pressure pushes the soft bone in the skull out of shape.

These so-called ''buggy babies'' are left in their prams because the surrounding conditions in their houses are bad or overcrowded.

Shelter called on Prime Minister Tony Blair's government to build an extra 20,000 affordable rented houses each year.

''The government must build the homes needed to give the more than one million children in bad housing a fair start in life,'' said Shelter's director of communications Graeme Brown.

The government said it had tripled investment in the housing stock to more than 5 billion pounds a year since Labour came to power in 1997.

''Hundreds of thousands of children have been lifted out of bad housing, thanks to the major programme of refurbishment to council housing since 1997,'' a Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said. ''We are determined to go further.'' REUTERS PDM PM0959