title: Estimating diarrhea mortality among young children in low and middle income countries.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Diarrhea remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among children under 5 years of age, but in many low and middle-income countries where vital registration data are lacking, updated estimates with regard to the proportion of deaths attributable to diarrhea are needed.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a systematic literature review to identify studies reporting diarrhea proportionate mortality for children 1-59 mo of age published between 1980 and 2009. Using the published proportionate mortality estimates and country level covariates we constructed a logistic regression model to estimate country and regional level proportionate mortality and estimated uncertainty bounds using Monte-Carlo simulations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified more than 90 verbal autopsy studies from around the world to contribute data to a single-cause model. We estimated diarrhea proportionate mortality for 84 countries in 6 regions and found diarrhea to account for between 10.0% of deaths in the Americas to 31.3% of deaths in the South-east Asian region.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Diarrhea remains a leading cause of death for children 1-59 mo of age. Published literature can be used to create a single-cause mortality disease model to estimate mortality for countries lacking vital registration data.
authors.affiliation: Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America. cfischer@jhsph.edu
authors.forename: Christa L Fischer
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Aryee
authors.forename: Cynthia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boschi-Pinto
authors.forename: Robert E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Black
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003906:Developing Countries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003967:Diarrhea / Q000401:mortality*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D012044:Regression Analysis; D035501:Uncertainty