An extra 3,000 consultant paediatricians are needed to deliver the safest possible service to children and their families, a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health report warns.
The college's biennial workforce census shows there are currently around 3,000 consultant posts and it believes this needs to rise to 6,000.
Their numbers rose only modestly between 2005 and 2007, while the number of community paediatricians fell.
Academics
College vice president for health services Simon Lenton said: "We have also found that there has been a worrying decline over the past two years in the number of academic paediatricians.
"These doctors produce the science and research that provides the foundation for evidence-based medicine and they train the medical students who become tomorrow's doctors."
There has been a fall of 8.4 per cent in the number of academic paediatricians since 2005, the census shows.
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