The impact of health interventions and programmes on mortality

Korea's reproductive health(RH) program had been focused on family planning and MCH care, with the family planning program being executed simultaneously with economic development for extreme poverty and hunger eradication until the mid of 1990.
The purpose of study is to identify the policies/programs, success factors for RH in Korea and contribute to improving the official development assistance(ODA) for RH in developing countries. Currently, most nations in Africa and South Asia, Korea's key partners for the ODA are characterized by high fertility, high maternal and infant mortality and extreme poverty, and low social status of women, whose circumstances are very similar to those of Korea in the 1960s.
Based on this study result, Korea's strategies in improving the RH- sector wide approach based on primary health care, the 'Women's Association for Saemaeul', which was organized as part of ownership and success of the five-year economic development-had been successful. Just, nations featuring high fertility can be regarded as male-dominated societies, with the result that Korea's intervention may cause resistance. Therefore, RH program to the developing countries need to consider their socio-cultural factors to ensure women's right to life at a national level needs to be set as the core of Korea's RH program.

INTRODUCTION:
India accounts for a fifth of world’s new T.B cases annually and 2/3rd of cases in South East Asia. TB primarily affects the lung (80 percent) but can also affect other parts of the body.

OBJECTIVES:
The objective of the study is to review and assess the status of the country in relation to Tuberculosis (Goal 6) and various issues and challenges that will be critical in achieving the goals.

METHODS:
The methods used in this study have been heavily drawn from secondary data sources like NFHS, different state governments and compiled by GoI, MoHFW.

RESULTS:
During 1998-2006 the prevalence has increased drastically. The death rate has increased from less than one percent to almost 3.5 till 2004 and a slight decline is observed during 2005. As per NFHS-1, the prevalence for all India was 467 per 1 lac population. During 1998-99 and 2005-2006 the figure was 544 and 445.

CONCLUSIONS:
The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) was started in India in 1993 (Phase-I) and it could achieve a cure rate of above 90. Further, the strategy was extended to cover 14 million population in phase-II (1995). After this successful testing the RNTCP, phase-III was launched in 1997.

Polio cases worldwide have declined from 60,000 per year in 1980 to <200 today, following repeated mass vaccination campaigns in affected countries. In 2010, 400 Million children worldwide participated in a polio vaccination campaign. Beyond specific effects on polio incidence, such campaigns may reduce under-5 mortality because 1) they can stimulate the demand for other health services, 2) there are potential non-specific effects of the oral Polio vaccine (OPV) on mortality and 3) investments in polio eradication may strengthen health systems. On the other hand, mass vaccination campaigns may also divert scarce human/financial resources from routine services to OPV provision, or foster passive health-seeking behaviors. Despite the scale of the polio eradication initiative, its impact on mortality is unclear because program evaluations have ignored issues of reverse causality. Polio campaigns are indeed more likely to be conducted in areas with limited health seeking behaviors. We devise a new instrumental variable strategy to account for this endogeneity. We use DHS data collected in 8 African countries to construct a time-series dataset on mortality outcomes and campaign exposure spanning 1996-2011. Initial results from 2-stage probit models suggest that polio campaigns reduced the utilization of health services.

The aim of the proposed study is to investigate whether exposure in early life to water-born infectious diseases leads to permanent scarring and increase in old-age mortality. Given exposure to infectious diseases
during childhood and in-utero increases the risk of developing chronic conditions at the old age, then cohorts born in large cities before the water filtration system was widely implemented would also have higher mortality than cohorts born afterwards, or those born in rural areas. This applies in particular to black population as compared to the white one. Based on the data from Social Security Medicare Part B merged at Duke University with the Numerical Identification Files from the Social Security Administration, the proposed study would use the individual level information on exact place of birth. The method applied is premiminary a visual assesment of mortality surfaces presenting data where random noise was eliminated with two-dimentional P-spline smoothing methods and estimation of a series of Cox proportional hazard models. Result of a preliminary study demonstrate that cohorts born in Washigton DC, Atlanta GA, Baltimore MA after the water purification was started on large scale had significantly lower mortality than cohorts born before this date, as compared to the total population of the country.

Short Abstract
Although there are declining trends, both in the diarrhea incidents and child mortality in North-East region of India, but Diarrheal incidents still prevail in high rate among younger children. This paper finds that despite treatments are available for diarrhea and it has been universalized in North-East India, 30 percent children remains without the any treatments.
The study indicates that use of oral rehydration is also declining, in reported period despite that mothers are well aware the ORS treatment but not the effectiveness of the ORS. Secondly, level of mother education and initiation of breast feeding has shown statistically significant influence on treatment of diarrhea. Thirdly, surprisingly sanitation facilities and source of drinking water were did not show any significant association with prevalence of diarrhea as expected, but sanitation facilities show negative relation with prevalence of diarrhea. Fourthly, in the case of treatment most of the socio-economic variables have shown statistical significant viz. level of mother education, age of children, wealth index, ethnicity, religion etc. Finally, shortfall of health worker is very high and people often face scarcity of medicine in government dispensary, which compels the people to buy medicine from private pharmacy.

Bangladesh achieved remarkable success in issue of third and fourth agenda of Millennium Development Goals- empowering women and to reduce child mortality rates; though an infant mortality of 52 deaths per 1000 live births indicate still we have to work to do in this sector. Under-five mortality may be reduced through the combined effect of improvement in standards of living between environment and personal hygiene, existence of maternal and child welfare scheme, as well as prevention and treatment of disease in infancy. Empowering women on her way to achieve freedom on own and child health care improve the quality of health related outcome of whole family; hopefully can decline under-five mortality in Bangladesh. In this paper, impact of women’s household decision-making autonomy on under-five survival had been determined without any intermediate terms. Using the proportional hazards model on BDHS-2007 data, the household decision-making autonomy is found to be a significant differential of under-five survival even after controlling for high risk factors of child mortality along with duration of breastfeeding, maternal health care seeking behavior and socioeconomic status. This implies; empowering women can effectively make a rapid enhancement in child and mothers health strategies, along with decline in under-five mortality.