title: How many child deaths can we prevent this year?
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Division of Policy and Planning, United Nations Children's Fund, New York, NY 10017, USA.
authors.forename: Gareth
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Richard W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Steketee
authors.forename: Robert E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Black
authors.forename: Zulfiqar A
authors.initials: ZA
authors.lastname: Bhutta
authors.forename: Saul S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003906:Developing Countries; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality; D011203:Poverty; D011314:Preventive Health Services / Q000379:methods*; D019472:Universal Health Insurance