Association between caregivers' knowledge and care seeking behaviour for children with symptoms of pneumonia in six sub-Saharan African Countries.

Background: Pneumonia is the main cause of child mortality world-wide and most of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Treatment with effective antibiotics is crucial to prevent these deaths; nevertheless only 2 out of 5 children with symptoms of pneumonia are taken to an appropriate care provider in SSA. While various factors associated with care seeking have been identified, the relationship between caregivers' knowledge of pneumonia symptoms and actual care seeking for their child with symptoms of pneumonia is not well researched.

Care seeking behaviour for children with suspected pneumonia in countries in sub-Saharan Africa with high pneumonia mortality.

Pneumonia is the leading cause of childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Because effective antibiotic treatment exists, timely recognition of pneumonia and subsequent care seeking for treatment can prevent deaths. For six high pneumonia mortality countries in SSA we examined if children with suspected pneumonia were taken for care, and if so, from which type of care providers, using national survey data of 76530 children.

The use of counting beads to improve the classification of fast breathing in low-resource settings: a multi-country review.

To decrease child mortality due to common but life-threatening illnesses, community health workers (CHWs) are trained to assess, classify and treat sick children. For pneumonia, CHWs are trained to count the respiratory rate of a child with cough and/or difficulty breathing, and determine whether the child has fast breathing or not based on how the child's breath count relates to age-specific respiratory rate cut-off points. International organizations training CHWs to classify fast breathing realized that many of them faced challenges counting and determining how the respiratory rate relates to age-specific cut-off points.

Evolution of the child health day strategy for the integrated delivery of child health and nutrition services.

Background: In efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goal for mortality among children under 5 years of age, countries require strategies for covering hard-to-reach and older children who are often missed by routine, fixed-site health services.

Objective: To document the evolution of Child Health Days (CHDs), designed as regular events for the delivery of health and nutrition services to children under the age of five.

Methods: We extracted information on service delivery strategies and codelivered interventions for the period 1999 to 2010from global monitoring databases for vitamin A and immunization.