Birth registration is a priority for child survival

Birth registration is a priority for child survival.

There are many child-headed families and adolescent carers as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa [1]. The lack of earnings in such families exacerbates household poverty with predictable impact on the health and well-being of the remaining household members. There are opportunities for these multiply deprived households to apply to the South African state for maintenance grant...

Birth registration and child undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa.

OBJECTIVE In many countries of the world millions of people are not registered at birth. However, in order to assess children's nutritional status it is necessary to have an exact knowledge of their age. In the present paper we discuss the effects of insufficient or imprecise age data on estimates of undernutrition prevalence. DESIGN Birth registration rates and levels of stunting, underweigh...

The implications of late-preterm birth for global child survival

Risks associated with late-preterm birth The article by Gouyon et al. in this issue adds to a limited collection on the health of late-preterm infants. Using a population-based dataset of over 150 000 singletons born alive at 34–41 weeks gestation in Burgundy in 2000–08, the authors showed a serial reduction with gestational age in the risk of death or severe neurological condition, from an adj...

The Challenges of measuring child mortality when birth registration is incomplete ∗

Birth spacing and child survival in rural Senegal.

BACKGROUND Studies examining the associations between short birth spacing and child mortality have often concentrated on the strength of the associations whilst the public health importance of short spacing in specific communities has received less attention. This study re-examines the association between short birth intervals and child mortality in rural Senegal and discusses the potential dir...