Association between coverage of maternal and child health interventions, and under-5 mortality: a repeated cross-sectional analysis of 35 sub-Saharan African countries

摘要

BackgroundInfant and child mortality rates are among the most important indicators of child health, nutrition, implementation of key survival interventions, and the overall social and economic development of a population. In this paper, we investigate the role of coverage of maternal and child health (MNCH) interventions in contributing to declines in child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.DesignData are from 81 Demographic and Health Surveys from 35 sub-Saharan African countries. Using ecological time-series and child-level regression models, we estimated the effect of MNCH interventions (summarized by the percent composite coverage index, or CCI) on child mortality with in the first 5 years of life net of temporal trends and covariates at the household, maternal, and child levels.ResultsAt the ecologic level, a unit increase in standardized CCI was associated with a reduction in under-5 child mortality rate (U5MR) of 29.0 per 1,000 (95% CI: ?43.2, ?14.7) after adjustment for survey period effects and cou...