[Old and new tasks in social pediatrics].

Social pediatrics has been highly successful in transmitting basic pediatric knowledge into the last family so that it has been possible by the measures of prevention and prophylaxis to reduce the infant mortality rate from 30% to less than 2% and to eradicate some infectious diseases completely. The importance of social pediatrics can be noted with the misery of children in the developing countries where morbidity and mortality in childhood are as high as ever although the knowledge in clinical pediatrics is on the same level. In the industrial nations psychosocial diseases have replaced infectious diseases. The fight against these requires special social pediatric efforts in order to meet the threat of e.g. juvenile delinquency and the drug scene together with pedopsychology and pedagogics.