BACKGROUND The number of child deaths is a potential indicator to assess the health condition of a country, and represents a major health challenge in Bangladesh. Although the country has performed exceptionally well in decreasing the mortality rate among children under five over the last few decades, mortality still remains relatively high. The main objective of this study is to identify the p...

OBJECTIVE This paper examines the association between birth intervals and infant and child mortality and nutritional status. METHODS Repeated analysis of retrospective survey data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program from 17 developing countries collected between 1990 and 1997 were used to examine these relationships. The key independent variable is the length of the precedin...

Human birth interval length is indicative of the level of parental investment that a child will receive: a short interval following birth means that parental resources must be split with a younger sibling during a period when the older sibling remains highly dependent on their parents. From a life-history theoretical perspective, it is likely that there are evolved mechanisms that serve to maxi...

The present study aimed to determine the patterns and factors associated with birth intervals in multiparous women in Babol, northern Iran. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 500 multiparous women at health centers and referred to the hospital for delivery in Babol, northern Iran in 2007. Data were collected using a questionnaire, including birth intervals, demographics, fertility variable...

Background: The term malnutrition generally refers to both under-nutrition and over-nutrition, but this study uses the term to refer solely to a deficiency of nutrition. In Ethiopia, child malnutrition is one of the most serious public health problem and the highest in the world. The purpose of the present study was to identify the high risk factors of malnutrition and test different statistica...

The germ of a novel arrives, I believe, in one moment of intense experience: when you catch an exchange of glances between a coloured girl and an old fiddler sitting opposite you in the Underground, when you hear from the dining-room of a back-street boarding house the lowing of a ship's siren. With me, the moment is generally lost even before the work begins. To the question, 'What gave you th...

Japan has no legislation regulating artificial reproductive technology. In surrogate birth, social parents may only register a legal relationship with the child in the Japanese family register, the koseki, using the three current categories of parent-child relationship in Japanese family law: natural, ordinary adoption and special adoption. In 2007, Japan’s Supreme Court dashed the hopes of Jap...