Assessing sex differences in childhood mortality

It tries to identify patterns and determinants of gender gap in child health in India. It applies Borda rule, PCA, Logistic regression on 3 NFHS rounds. Children under 3 years are units of analysis.
With 21 indicators, it is shown that there are evidence of gender gap exists in all states of India. It is found that gender gap in various health outcomes are not much related to gender gap in various indicators of health-seeking behaviour. However for girl children’s health achievement, indicators of health-seeking behaviour are significantly related to indicators of health outcome. It is also shown that any consistently robust pattern of gender bias against girl children in child health is not present in India. But there is a consistent pattern of girl children’s absolute health achievement.
Hence we focus on girl children exclusively and tried to identify the determinants of health achievements for girl children. We analyse effects of some selected variables on chance of full immunisation, medical treatment in diarrhoea and fever/ cough, breastfeeding, malnutrition and mortality for girl children. Except for a few cases, the results are consistently robust. It has been found that, among others, female education and women’s empowerment do have a positive role in reducing gender bias in child health in India.

Many Liberian children suffer the burden of malnutrition. Studies have revealed its consequences on children may be severe and irreversible with long lasting implications on those who suffer malnutrition in early childhood. Mothers are known to be the main providers of primary care to children, thus understanding the contribution of maternal characteristics on child nutrition is key towards addressing the problem. This paper examines the role of maternal socio-demographic characteristics on nutritional status of children measured by stunting, wasting and underweight. Analysis of DHS (2007) data indicated almost a third of children were chronically undernourished, a fifth underweight whilst six percent was acutely undernourished. This is significantly high by Sub Saharan Africa standards. Significant determinants of nutritional status were region of residence, age and sex of child, wealth and migration status during the war. Efforts should address enhancing women’s status in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

There is convincing scientific evidence of a negative association between socio-economic position and mortality at different stages of life, especially adulthood. For children and adolescents, the evidence is less extensive and convincing as low levels of child mortality hinder detailed analyses. The aim of this study is to investigate the social patterning of Belgian child mortality using linked register data on mortality and census data on socioeconomic characteristics. The data for this analysis are rather exceptional outside the Scandinavian context and allow for an in-depth investigation of childhood inequalities. Several indicators of parental socioeconomic position and socio-demographic background are integrated and analyses are stratified in order to find out to what extent inequalities vary by sex and age group (0-4, 5-9 and 10-14). Integration of causes of death data provide additional clues on the origin of inequalities during childhood. Information is available for two periods in time (1991-1995 and 2001-2004), allowing for an examination of time trends in child mortality differences. The research results confirm the international patterns, differences generally being larger at young ages, among boys, for external causes and showing an increasing trend between the 1990s and the 2000s.

Although the relationships between child’s sex and risk of death before the age of 5 have often been studied, the mechanisms by which sex uniquely influences childhood mortality are not well understood or empirically documented. Most studies estimating sex differences in childhood mortality reported an unadjusted effect without controlling for covariates. In this paper the main purpose is to estimate and interpret adjusted effects on child mortality of child’s sex, adjusting for the matrices of social, economic, demographic, and biological factors. Data come from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys in 30 sub-Saharan African nations. I conducted country-by-country multivariable analysis to assess sex differentials in under-five mortality (among recent singleton livebirth in the 5 years preceding the survey) using multilevel discrete-time hazard model. I used meta-analysis techniques to combine and summarize results from multiple countries. The results show a systematically higher mortality for male children compared to females in all countries except Sierra Leone and the relationship is significant in 18 of 30 countries. These patterns withstood controls for observed individual-and community level factors, as well as unobserved heterogeneity.

In Kenya, diarrhea is among the leading causes of childhood mortality, despite being easy to prevent and treat, it causes about 1.5 million under-five deaths annually. Adverse health outcomes due to diarrheal diseases are worse in slums, however they are preventable with appropriate and prompt healthcare-seeking.The study aims at exploring the healthcare-seeking practices of caregivers with under-five children in two slum settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Specifically to identify care-seeking practices of caregivers of under-five children with diarrhea; determine the prevalence of appropriate healthcare-seeking practices and identify socio-demographic factors associated with care-seeking practices of caregivers.The study uses data from a project nested into the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System, which collected information on morbidity for children reported to be ill over the last 2 weeks preceding the survey. Results show that healthcare-seeking practices for diarrhea remains a great challenge among the urban poor with more than half (55%) of the caregivers seeking inappropriate healthcare. Use of ORS and Zinc supplements which are widely recommended for management of diarrhea is very low. The critical predictors of healthcare-seeking identified are duration of illness, place of residence and the child’s age

This paper examines the effectiveness of a national milk fortification program in Mexico, and the impact on anemia and cognitive outcomes among children. In Mexico, anemia is prevalent in pre- and school-aged children and women. As iron deficiency anemia can be linked to many negative health and non-health outcomes, such as poor cognitive development, food fortification programs have been introduced to improve iron status of children. Liconsa is a social assistance program in Mexico that provides subsidized fortified milk, especially to children under 12 years of age. The objective of our study is to assess the population-level effectiveness of the Liconsa milk fortification program on child anemia and cognitive development. With nationally representative longitudinal health surveys from Mexico, we estimated the effect of being a Liconsa beneficiary household, and the effect of the intervention of fortification of Liconsa milk on anemia and long-term child cognitive development using the modified Poisson model with robust error variance. Results show that males had significantly reduced risk of anemia. There were also significant positive effects of receiving Liconsa milk in 2002 on the reduced risk of anemia measured in 2005 and increased cognitive test scores for children aged 5 and older.

Abstract
Infant and childhood mortality are good indicators of social development of a nation. The developed nations of the world are having infant and childhood mortality of below 5/1000 and 10/1000 live births respectively. From the National Demographic and Health Survey of 2008 Nigeria has an infant mortality rate of 75/1000 and childhood mortality of 88/1000 live births. These are very high by world standard. The Federal government of Nigeria through the Population policy and also the Health policy targeted at reducing the infant mortality rate to 35/1000 and childhood mortality rate to 45/1000 and maternal mortality to 125/100000 births. If the overall objective of providing effective, efficient, quality, accessible and affordable healthcare services that will improve the health status of Nigerians and achieve health related Millennium Development Goals is to be met, then there is the need for proper re-examination and overhauling of the functioning and operations of the Primary Healthcare system. The paper is of the view that IMR and CMR can be drastically reduced if the philosophy and objectives of PHC system are adhered to, most especially in our rural communities. Social Action Model is adopted as theoretical frame while the method consists of questionnaire, FGD and Key Informant interview..

Background: Almost half of the preschool children are stunted and nearly 60 million children are underweight in India (IIPS & ORG Macro, 2006). The present study investigates the role of child feeding practices and its correlation with child nutritional indicators among Indian children based on data collected during 2005-2006 (NFHS-3, INDIA) using Ruel and Menon’s method with some modification in Indian context on children of 3-36 months of age. Methodology and findings: Data collected on breastfeeding, and complimentary feeding practices were used to construct age specific child feeding index with explanatory variables like, wealth index, birth order, mother’s educational status, and religion using binary and multivariate analysis. Conclusion: There are wide diversity in feeding practices among Indian children by different regions and SES. The proportion of children with better feeding practices are having better growth pattern. The richer, male children from southern region with high educated mothers are less likely to be stunted than their counterpart. There is wide diversity in giving animal products and meal frequencies across different age group. The stunting is strongly associated with child feeding indices especially in children of 6-9 months. The stunting is very high among children with poor feeding practices

Emile Durkheim’s scientific study on suicide (1897) is considered the pioneering work on the epidemiological impact of religion, a topic which then became the subject of intense inquiry in the West, before, during and after the epidemiologic transition. In developing countries in general, there is a dearth of scientific studies on the matter, even though the influence of religion may be more greater due the generally low levels of education among the population. Reluctance to vaccinate based on religious grounds, for example, have been reported in northern Nigeria where in 2003, Muslim leaders called on parents to refuse to vaccinate children against polio, on the grounds that the vaccine may contain HIV or cause infertility (Jegede, 2007). Such ideological barriers stand in the way of the Expanded Programme on Immunization’s goal to vaccinate all children, and of consequently achieving the fourth MDG (to reduce under 5 mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015). In order to improve the effectiveness of immunization programs, it is important to measure disparities in childhood immunization and understand the causes of these disparities. Using data collected in a Demographic and Health Surveillance System, this paper aim to examine the religious differences in child vaccination in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Distance to health facilities is often cited as a major barrier limiting access to care in sub-Saharan and other developing countries. There are however limited data on the causal effects of distance to facilities on child survival. This paper uses unique longitudinal data collected in a rural district of Tanzania to test whether enhanced proximity to health services arising from investment in dispensaries contributed to the rapid decline in under-five mortality recently observed in Tanzania. Data on births, deaths, migrations, SES and geographic data on households and facilities have been recorded every 120 days since 1999 (n≈85,000). We use multivariate analysis to measure the causal effects of distance to health facilities on child survival and to test interactions between distance to health facilities and maternal education and households’ SES. Initial results indicate that, from 2000 to 2010, child mortality declined close to 40% (from 115 to 70 per 1000). The distance to the closest health facility remained a strong determinant of child survival, even after adjusting for endogeneity biases. The development of community-based primary health care can improve health outcomes and can increase equity by offsetting the detrimental effects of low maternal education, household poverty and distance to health facilities.