The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a framework for measuring the progress of nations. Several of these goals relate to child malnutrition, which remains an important contributor to child morbidity and mortality, accounting for approximately 45% of child deaths globally. A high proportion of undernourished children still live in Africa and parts of Asia, and the uneven rate of reduc...

India has made a significant progress in the reduction of annual under five child deaths in the last few years. However, the absolute number of annual child deaths still remains high and achieving Millennium Development Goal 4 for India may not be possible at the currentrate of child mortality reduction. The deaths due to the easily preventable and treatable causes indicate that either health s...

BACKGROUND Elevated distress has been well documented among parents of children with cancer. Family systems theories suggest that cancer-related stressors and parental distress have the potential to affect child-rearing practices, but this topic has received limited empirical attention. The present work examined self-reported child-rearing practices among mothers and fathers of children with ca...

BACKGROUND Suicide rates traditionally increased with ageing. There is a paucity of studies examining factors associated with age-associated trends in suicide rates. METHODS The relationship between suicide rates and ageing was examined by ascertaining suicide rates in the seven age-bands 16-24 years to 75+ years from the World Health Organisation for 97 countries. The relationship between so...

BACKGROUND Early detection and treatment of psychosocial problems by preventive child healthcare may lead to considerable health benefits, and a short questionnaire could support this aim. The aim of this study was to assess whether the Dutch version of the US Pediatric Symptom checklist (PSC) is valid and suitable for the early detection of psychosocial problems among children. METHODS We in...

PURPOSE Following legal reform in 2013, the annual number of asylum seekers entering South Korea has increased from 1,143 in 2012 to 5,711 in 2015. We interviewed six African refugee mothers of young children regarding their health needs and barriers to access maternal child health services. METHODS We recruited mothers who had visited a clinic for immigrants between July 2013 and August 2015...

• There is an insufficient political determination and respect in developing countries to really improve the situation of poor women and their babies • The mother-child care in most developing countries does not meet the minimum standard of essential care • It is unacceptable that women have insufficient access to information and safe reproductive healthcare • MDG4 and 5 are closely related to ...

Background Considering that performance measurement is largely recognised as a key tool for quality improvement, which kind of performance evaluation can be useful for healthcare professional, general managers and regional policy makers to improve the mother and child healthcare services? The presentation of the experience in assessing the maternity pathway (MP), made initially by Tuscany and s...

The study of geographical variation in healthcare has moved on since J Allison Glover's seminal study in 1938, and its value in highlighting inequity in access, quality and outcomes is well-established. Study of variation in healthcare for children, however, has proven more difficult due to barriers with data and idiosyncrasies in how we measure outcomes for children and families. This paper is...

Objectives. The Quality of Life (QoL) of children with Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) in the UK has not been examined, and a discrepancy measure based on Gap theory has rarely been used. This study investigated whether 1) child self-reports of QoL using a discrepancy measure (the Generic Children’s QoL Measure; GCQ) are lower than those from healthy children, 2) proxy reports from parents and health...