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WHAT'S NEW THIS THURSDAY: FIVE ON CHILD MORTALITY ESTIMATION

Monday, 15th of October 2012

FIVE ON CHILD MORTALITY ESTIMATION

A series from PLOS Medicine. Abstracts only, followed by weblinks to full text.

Stories written by PLoS Medicine

Child Mortality Estimation: A Global Overview of Infant and Child Mortality…

By PLoS Medicine

by Michel Guillot, Patrick Gerland, François Pelletier, Ameed Saabneh

Background The under-five mortality rate (the probability of dying between birth and age 5 y, also denoted in the literature as U5MR and 5q0) is a key indicator of child health, but it conceals important information about how this mortality is distributed by age. One important distinction is what amount of the under-five mortality occurs below age 1 y (1q0) versus at age 1 y and above (4q1). However, in many country settings, this distinction is often difficult to establish because of various types of data errors. As a result, it is common practice to resort to model age patterns to estimate 1q0 and 4q1 on the basis of an observed value of 5q0.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-a-global-overview-of-infant-and-child-mortality/

Child Mortality Estimation: Methods Used to Adjust for Bias due to AIDS in…

By PLoS Medicine

by Neff Walker, Kenneth Hill, Fengmin Zhao

In most low- and middle-income countries, child mortality is estimated from data provided by mothers concerning the survival of their children using methods that assume no correlation between the mortality risks of the mothers and those of their children. This assumption is not valid for populations with generalized HIV epidemics, however, and in this review, we show how the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) uses a cohort component projection model to correct for AIDS-related biases in the data used to estimate trends in under-five mortality. In this model, births in a given year are identified as occurring to HIV-positive or HIV-negative mothers, the lives of the infants and mothers are projected forward using survivorship probabilities to estimate survivors at the time of a given survey, and the extent to which excess mortality of children goes unreported because of the deaths of HIV-infected mothers prior to the survey is calculated. Estimates from the survey for past periods can then be adjusted for the estimated bias.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-methods-used-to-adjust-for-bias-due-to-aids-in/

Child Mortality Estimation: Estimating Sex Differences in Childhood…

By PLoS Medicine

by Cheryl Chriss Sawyer Introduction Producing estimates of infant (under age 1 y), child (age 1–4 y), and under-five (under age 5 y) mortality rates disaggregated by sex is complicated by problems with data quality and availability. Interpretation of sex differences requires nuanced analysis: girls have a biological advantage against many causes of death that may be eroded if they are disadvantaged in access to resources. Earlier studies found that girls in some regions were not experiencing the survival advantage expected at given levels of mortality. In this paper I generate new estimates of sex differences for the 1970s to the 2000s. Methods and Findings Simple fitting methods were applied to male-to-female ratios of infant and under-five mortality rates from vital registration, surveys, and censuses.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-estimating-sex-differences-in-childhood/

Child Mortality Estimation: Consistency of Under-Five Mortality Rate…

By PLoS Medicine

by Romesh Silva

Background Given the lack of complete vital registration data in most developing countries, for many countries it is not possible to accurately estimate under-five mortality rates from vital registration systems. Heavy reliance is often placed on direct and indirect methods for analyzing data collected from birth histories to estimate under-five mortality rates. Yet few systematic comparisons of these methods have been undertaken. This paper investigates whether analysts should use both direct and indirect estimates from full birth histories, and under what circumstances indirect estimates derived from summary birth histories should be used.

Methods and Findings Usings Demographic and Health Surveys data from West Africa, East Africa, Latin America, and South/Southeast Asia, I quantify the differences between direct and indirect estimates of under-five mortality rates, analyze data quality issues, note the relative effects of these issues, and test whether these issues explain the observed differences.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-consistency-of-under-five-mortality-rate/

Child Mortality Estimation: A Comparison of UN IGME and IHME Estimates of…

By PLoS Medicine

by Leontine Alkema, Danzhen You

Background Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a reduction in the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. In 2011, estimates were published by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The difference in the U5MR estimates produced by the two research groups was more than 10% and corresponded to more than ten deaths per 1,000 live births for 10% of all countries in 1990 and 20% of all countries in 2010, which can lead to conflicting conclusions with respect to countries’ progress. To understand what caused the differences in estimates, we summarised differences in underlying data and modelling approaches used by the two groups, and analysed their effects.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-a-comparison-of-un-igme-and-ihme-estimates-of/

Child Mortality Estimation: Accelerated Progress in Reducing Global Child…

By PLoS Medicine

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

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.

http://www.globalhealthhub.org/2012/08/28/child-mortality-estimation-accelerated-progress-in-reducing-global-child/