Despite a tremendous increase in financial resources, many countries are not on track to achieve the child and maternal mortality targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. It is commonly argued that two main social factors - improved democratic governance and aggregate income - will ultimately lead to progress in reducing child and maternal mortality. However, these two facto...

BACKGROUND Recent studies indicate that the traditional rural-urban dichotomy pointing to cities as places of better health in the developing world can be complicated by poverty differentials. Knowledge of spatial patterns is essential to understanding the processes that link individual demographic outcomes to characteristics of a place. A significant limitation, however, is the lack of spatial...

Q: What is the Commission’s goal? A: The goal is to reduce inequalities in health within countries and among countries. For example, under-five child mortality in some sub-Saharan countries is greater than 300 per 1000 live births and in Iceland, it is three per 1000 live births: there is no good biological reason for this. If we had the means and will to tackle this, we could prevent it. Withi...

In an urban area of Guinea-Bissau, where more than 80% of the children have been vaccinated, measles continues to be a major cause of child mortality. Compared with the period before the introduction of vaccination, more cases occur outside the community, while more cases within the district are now guests and newcomers. Half of the new introductions of measles into the community and 30% of the...

The child survival revolution of the 1980s contributed to steady decreases in child mortality in some populations, but much remains to be done. More than 10 million children will die this year, almost all of whom are poor. Two-thirds of these deaths could have been prevented if effective child survival interventions had reached all children and mothers who needed them. Translation of current kn...

BACKGROUND The fourth Millennium Development Goal calls for a two-thirds reduction in under-5 mortality between 1990 and 2015. Under-5 mortality rate is declining, but many countries are still far from achieving the goal. Effective child health interventions that could reduce child mortality exist, but national decision-makers lack contextual information for priority setting in their respective...

This issue reports selected results from a comprehensive study of infant and child mortality based on the National Family Health Survey data. The analysis distinguishes between neonatal, postneonatal, infant and child mortality since mortality and its causes vary considerably among children of different ages. Hazard regression analysis was used to estimate the effects of each individual varia...

OBJECTIVE To estimate levels and trends, gender differentials, effect of modes of living, regional differentials, and the effect of parental educational on infant and child mortality. METHODS A nationwide stratified random sample was used to estimate levels, trends and differentials of infant and child mortality in Saudi Arabia. The study was executed during the period February 2006 to June 2...

The objective of this paper is to examine how child mortality changes with different levels of maternal education and to quantify the impact of material education and female labour force participation. Child mortality gradients, according to years of education, are rather steep at the primary education level for both male and female children. In post-primary stages of education incremental ga...

In 2003, about 2.2 million children under age 5 died in India which is the highest total of any country and about 20 percent of all child deaths globally. Where most children die is shown in Figure 1. Recent years have shown a slowing down in the decline in infant mortality rates in India, resulting in a departure from the longer-term trends (Claeson, Bos, et al 1999, 2000) . The slowing down i...