BACKGROUND Global deworming programs aim to reach 75% of at-risk preschool-age children (pre-SAC) by 2020. The 2013 global pre-SAC deworming coverage initially published by the World Health Organization (WHO) was 23.9%, but this estimate inadequately captured deworming delivered through Child Health Day (CHD) platforms. OBJECTIVE To update global and regional coverage estimates of pre-SAC dew...

Evolution of the portfolio of RMM countries UNICEF, Canada and IIP representatives met in March 2008 and reviewed each of the seven countries planned for IHSS investment to select a subset for RMM. A central criterion was a high probability of strong IHSS implementation, as reflected in levels of planned project investment and informal assessments of government commitment to the project. Such s...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Child well-being is important for lifelong health and well-being. Although there is a robust evidence base linking social determinants of health (eg, relative poverty and income inequality) to child well-being, social and public health policy tends to focus on interventions to mitigate their effects, rather than remove the root causes. The goal of this study was to exa...

BACKGROUND The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates worldwide and in recent years the Government has made breastfeeding promotion one of its priorities. The UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative is likely to increase breastfeeding initiation but not duration. Other strategies which involve provision of support for breastfeeding mothers in the early weeks after birth are therefore required ...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2016.09.067 0264-410X/ 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecomm Dear Editor, We thank Pond and Mounier-Jack for their comments on our paper, ‘‘Monitoring vaccination coverage: Defining the role of surveys” [1]. We agree that for many countries, administrative estimates of coverage...

Understanding how poverty and inequalities impact on children is the major goal of Young Lives, a unique longitudinal, mixed-methods study. Two cohorts totaling 12,000 children are being tracked since 2001, growing-up in Ethiopia, the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) India, Peru and Vietnam. Earlier versions of this paper were prepared as Young Lives contribution to a UNICEF/UN Women consultation o...

In March 2012, the SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy was convened to define the term "vaccine hesitancy", as well as to map the determinants of vaccine hesitancy and develop tools to measure and address the nature and scale of hesitancy in settings where it is becoming more evident. The definition of vaccine hesitancy and a matrix of determinants guided the development of a survey tool to...

The new UK focus on well-being: what will it mean for tackling social inequalities in health? It is difficult to imagine who would not be in favour of improving well-being. Yet a major problem with well-being is knowing what different commentators understand by the term. First introduced by the World Health Organization in 1948, 1 there is still little consensus over how well-being should be de...

Adolescence has been defined by the World Health Organization as the period of life spanning the ages between 10 to 19 years. Most Important physical, psychological, and behavioural changes take place in this period making this a vulnerable period in the growth and development cycle. Girls are more likely to be affected due to various social and economic reasons. In an Indian family with limite...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the nutritional adequacy and feasibility of breastmilk replacement options recommended by WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF. The study aim was to explore suitability of the 2001 feeding recommendations for infants of HIV-infected mothers for a rural region in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa specifically with respect to adequacy of micronutrients and essential fatty acids, cost, and ...