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    Lancet. 2003 Jul 5;362(9377):65-71.

    How many child deaths can we prevent this year?

    Jones G, Steketee RW, Black RE, Bhutta ZA, Morris SS; Bellagio Child Survival Study Group.

    Division of Policy and Planning, United Nations Children's Fund, New York, NY 10017, USA.

    Comment in:

    This is the second of five papers in the child survival series. The first focused on continuing high rates of child mortality (over 10 million each year) from preventable causes: diarrhoea, pneumonia, measles, malaria, HIV/AIDS, the underlying cause of undernutrition, and a small group of causes leading to neonatal deaths. We review child survival interventions feasible for delivery at high coverage in low-income settings, and classify these as level 1 (sufficient evidence of effect), level 2 (limited evidence), or level 3 (inadequate evidence). Our results show that at least one level-1 intervention is available for preventing or treating each main cause of death among children younger than 5 years, apart from birth asphyxia, for which a level-2 intervention is available. There is also limited evidence for several other interventions. However, global coverage for most interventions is below 50%. If level 1 or 2 interventions were universally available, 63% of child deaths could be prevented. These findings show that the interventions needed to achieve the millennium development goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 are available, but that they are not being delivered to the mothers and children who need them.

    PMID: 12853204 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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