WHO: More than half of child deaths are due to conditions that could be easily prevented or treated given access to health care and improvements to their quality of life (5)

25 August, 2022

In the first message in this thread, I asked: "I would like to invite discussion about child deaths where failures in basic health care, particularly in the home and community, have contributed to avoidable deaths... Can anyone comment from their experience, or share relevant publications, that help us understand how a lack of basic healthcare information can contribute to avoidable suffering and death? How can we better meet the information needs of families and primary health workers?"

My thanks to Martin Becker, who replied: "I am not aware of such studies. To get reliable data would require a confidential enquiry into childhood deaths including interviews of parents to trace back accurately the immidiate history prior to death. Relying on records kept (or not kept) by health workers would not be sufficient. The sample size would not have to be huge. It would need to done in a country where deaths are recorded with sufficient details that allow researchers to contact the child's family even if death occur outside health facilities."

I would be interested to hear about any research on quality of care in the home and/or community in low-resource settings, whether the care has been led by the family, lay health workers or health professionals. The decisions made (or not made) by families would seem to be especially important, especially where health workers are lacking and health facilities are a long distance away. Does anyone have data on contributing factors to child deaths in the home or community, before reaching a health worker or facility?

Best wishes, Neil

Let's build a future where children are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information - Join CHIFA (Child Healthcare Information For All): http://www.hifa.org/forums/chifa-child-health-and-rights

CHIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA campaign (Healthcare Information For All) and assistant moderator of the CHIFA forum. Twitter: @hifa_org FB: facebook.com/HIFAdotORG neil@hifa.org