BACKGROUND Despite continued national and international efforts, access to improved water and sanitation remains limited in many developing countries. The health consequences of lacking access to water and sanitation are severe, and particularly important for child development. METHODS To investigate the associations between child health and access to water and sanitation, we merged all avail...

Water and sanitation indicators under the Millennium Development Goals failed to capture high-risk practices undertaken on a regular basis. In conjunction with local partners, fourteen rounds of household surveys using mobile phones with a customized open-source application were conducted across nine study geographies in Asia and Africa. In addition to the main water and sanitation facilities, ...

RESEARCH ARTICLE Logistic Regression Additive Model: Application to Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey Data W.J. Dlamini, S.F. Melesse and H.G. Mwambi Faculty of Science and Agriculture, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Zululand, Private Bag X1001, KwaDlangezwa, 3886, South Africa Collage of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, School of mathematics, statistics and comput...

BACKGROUND Early adolescent pregnancy presents a major barrier to the health and wellbeing of young women and their children. Previous studies suggest geographic heterogeneity in adolescent births, with clear "hot spots" experiencing very high prevalence of teenage pregnancy. As the reduction of adolescent pregnancy is a priority in many countries, further detailed information of the geographic...

BACKGROUND Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted throughout sub-Saharan Africa indicate there is widespread acceptance of intimate partner violence, contributing to an adverse health risk environment for women. While qualitative studies suggest important limitations in the accuracy of the DHS methods used to elicit attitudes toward intimate partner violence, to date there has been litt...

The Population Census is an important source of statistical information in most countries that is capable of producing reliable estimates of population characteristics for small geographic areas. One limitation of a census is that there are many population characteristics that cannot be collected due to respondent burden or cost. This means that statistical agencies have to conduct population b...

Background Malaria is of global health concern particularly among pregnant women. Nigeria contributes largely to global burden but coverage of Intermittent Preventive Treatment of malaria in pregnancy using Sulphadoxine pyrimethamine remains low. This study was conducted to determine the national situation of missed opportunity for IPTp-SP and attempted to look at correlates and predictors. M...

Increasing the participation of the private health sector in the AIDS response could help to achieve universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Yet little is known about the extent to which the private health sector is delivering HIV-related services. This study uses data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and AIDS Indicator Surveys (AIS) from 12 c...

BACKGROUND Adult height is a useful biological measure of long term population health and well being. We examined the cohort differences and socioeconomic patterning in adult height in low- to middle-income countries. METHODS/FINDINGS We analyzed cross-sectional, representative samples of 364,538 women aged 25-49 years drawn from 54 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted between 1994 ...

Although Cambodia now permits elective abortion, scarcity of research on this topic means that information on abortion incidence is limited to regional estimates. This estimation model combines national survey data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) with national prospective data of abortion procedures from government health facilities, collected in 2005 and 2010, to calculate the nation...