WHAT'S NEW THIS SUNDAY: CHILD MORTALITY ESTIMATION

Thursday, 20th of September 2012

• CHILD MORTALITY ESTIMATION: ACCELERATED PROGRESS IN REDUCING GLOBAL CHILD MORTALITY, 1990–2010

Kenneth Hill and colleagues provide an introductory overview of how the latest United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation estimates were produced, summarizes the key findings of these estimates and describe current methodology and recent methodological innovations.

Kenneth Hill1*, Danzhen You2, Mie Inoue3, Mikkel Z. Oestergaard3, on behalf of the Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation¶

1 Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 United Nations Children's Fund, New York, New York, United States of America, 3 Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Abstract below; full text, http://www.ploscollections.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001303;jsessionid=9D0D9D182E3DA6300C4712FFFC62E993

 Monitoring development indicators has become a central interest of international agencies and countries for tracking progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. In this review, which also provides an introduction to a collection of articles, we describe the methodology used by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation to track country-specific changes in the key indicator for Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4), the decline of the under-five mortality rate (the probability of dying between birth and age five, also denoted in the literature as U5MR and 5q0). We review how relevant data from civil registration, sample registration, population censuses, and household surveys are compiled and assessed for United Nations member states, and how time series regression models are fitted to all points of acceptable quality to establish the trends in U5MR from which infant and neonatal mortality rates are generally derived. The application of this methodology indicates that, between 1990 and 2010, the global U5MR fell from 88 to 57 deaths per 1,000 live births, and the annual number of under-five deaths fell from 12.0 to 7.6 million. Although the annual rate of reduction in the U5MR accelerated from 1.9% for the period 1990–2000 to 2.5% for the period 2000–2010, it remains well below the 4.4% annual rate of reduction required to achieve the MDG 4 goal of a two-thirds reduction in U5MR from its 1990 value by 2015. Thus, despite progress in reducing child mortality worldwide, and an encouraging increase in the pace of decline over the last two decades, MDG 4 will not be met without greatly increasing efforts to reduce child deaths.

The article abstracted above is one of a series on child mortality estimation methods, published in PLOS Medicine. To access the series, go to

http://www.ploscollections.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info:doi/10.1371/issue.pcol.v07.i19

• CHILD MORTALITY ESTIMATION METHODS

Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a reduction of two-thirds in the under-5 mortality rate between 1990 and 2015. Reliable estimates of child mortality are critical to the monitoring of progress toward this important goal. The UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) annually reports on country, regional and global trends in child mortality. In this Collection of five research articles and two reviews the independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the UN IGME introduces the group's methodological innovations in estimating child mortality. http://www.ploscollections.org/childmortalityestimation

The Collection is produced with support from UNICEF and the TAG of the UN IGME. The Collection Editor is Dr. Virginia Barbour, and the Academic Editor is Professor. Peter Byass. The PLOS Medicine editors have sole editorial responsibility for the content of this Collection. The views expressed in this Collection are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank. Its contents have not been formally edited and cleared by the United Nations, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank.

Child Mortality Estimation: Accelerated Progress in Reducing Global Child Mortality, 1990–2010

Kenneth Hill, Danzhen You, Mie Inoue, Mikkel Z. Oestergaard, Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001303

Child Mortality Estimation: Methods Used to Adjust for Bias due to AIDS in Estimating Trends in Under-Five Mortality

Neff Walker, Kenneth Hill, Fengmin Zhao

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001298

Child Mortality Estimation: Appropriate Time Periods for Child Mortality Estimates from Full Birth Histories

Jon Pedersen, Jing Liu

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001289

Child Mortality Estimation: Consistency of Under-Five Mortality Rate Estimates Using Full Birth Histories and Summary Birth Histories

Romesh Silva

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001296

Child Mortality Estimation: A Global Overview of Infant and Child Mortality Age Patterns in Light of New Empirical Data

Michel Guillot, Patrick Gerland, François Pelletier, Ameed Saabneh

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001299

Child Mortality Estimation: Estimating Sex Differences in Childhood Mortality since the 1970s

Cheryl Chriss Sawyer

PLoS Medicine:
Published 28 Aug 2012 | info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001287

Child Mortality Estimation: A Comparison of UN IGME and IHME Estimates of Levels and Trends in Under-Five Mortality Rates and Deaths

Leontine Alkema, Danzhen You