Risk factor of infant and child mortality in rural Burkina Faso.

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, April, 2004 by Heiko Becher

Introduction

A total of 10.5 million children under 5 years of age were estimated to have died worldwide in 1999, and the great majority of these deaths occurred in developing countries (1). Most childhood deaths have been attributed to diarrhoea, acute respiratory illness, malaria, measles, and malnutrition--conditions that are either preventable or treatable with low-cost interventions (2). The highest mortality rates worldwide are still in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where approximately 15% of newborn children are expected to die before reaching their fifth birthday (1).

Childhood mortality rates have declined considerably over the past few decades in most of SSA, but since the 1990s mortality rates have started to increase again in parts of the continent...