BIRCH team
NPR Newborns Child mortality Babies Simon Hay
October 25, 2019 | Health News

Where You're Born Even Within A Country Still Matters (NPR - Features Simon Hay)

Better vaccines, nutrition and disease control have cut the global death rate for children in half over the past 20 years. But even within countries that have made major progress, children can face greatly different fates.

"Where you're born substantially impacts your probability of surviving to 5," says Simon Hay, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who is the lead author of a new study on childhood mortality in Nature.

BIRCH team
Africa Health Trial Antibiotics Child mortality
August 15, 2019 | Health News

Trial in Africa Probes Antibiotic’s Effects on Child Mortality

In the mid-2000s, researchers conducted a clinical trial in Ethiopia to see what it would take to eliminate trachoma, a disease caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis and the most common cause of blindness from infection worldwide. They randomly gave one- to 10-year-old kids either the antibiotic azithromycin to clear and prevent infection or delayed their treatment until after the trial ended.

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Child mortality IHME Nicholas Kassebaum Reuters Inequality
April 04, 2017 | Health News

Reuters: Progress Uneven as Global Child Death Rates Fall

By Andrew M. Seaman

(Reuters Health) - - Deaths among children and adolescents became less common between 1990 and 2015, but not all countries benefited equally from the improvements, according to a new analysis.

Countries with low social and economic statuses shoulder a much larger child and adolescent mortality burden compared to countries with better income, education and fertility levels, researchers found.